Ep. 4: The EA Stands For Ethical Arbitrage

In chapters 4 and 5, Harry becomes fabulously wealthy and meets Draco Malfoy. Anthea, Elisa, and Jake are joined by Ernie to discuss effective altruism, the fundamental attribution error, and being built different.

Citations and further reading:

• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, chapter 4: https://hpmor.com/chapter/4
• HPMoR, chapter 5: https://hpmor.com/chapter/5
• "Eliezer's Unteachable Methods of Sanity," Eliezer Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 6 Dec 2025. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/isSBwfgRY6zD6mycc/eliezer-s-unteachable-methods-of-sanity
• "ELI5: What is arbitrage and how do arbitrageurs make money?" r/explainlikeimfive, 27 Nov 2012. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13wekw/comment/c77s5go/
• "Effective Altruism." Lesswrong, 2 May 2024. https://www.lesswrong.com/w/effective-altruism
• "Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately," EY. LessWrong, 1 Apr 2009. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-fuzzies-and-utilons-separately
• "Can one person make a difference? What the evidence says." Benjamin Todd. 80,000 Hours, accessed 22 Apr 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260219151243/https://80000hours.org/career-guide/can-one-person-make-a-difference/
• "Sam Bankman-Fried on Arbitrage and Altruism (Ep. 145)," Conversations With Tyler. 9 Mar 2022. https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/sam-bankman-fried/
• "An excellent collection of Fermi problems for your class," Kevin Cummins. Innovative Teaching Ideas, 14 Aug 2023. https://innovativeteachingideas.com/blog/an-excellent-collection-of-fermi-problems-for-your-class/
• "Fundamental Attribution Error." Wikipedia, accessed 22 Apr 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260401065702/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
• "Fundamental Attribution Error in Psychology," Saul McLeod. SimplyPsychology.com, accessed 22 Apr 2026. https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html
• "The attribution of attitudes," Jones and Harris. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 1967. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103167900340?via%3Dihub
• "The "Fundamental Attribution Error" is rational in an uncertain world," Walker, Smith, and Vul. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2015. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/48d9b5qb#main
• "Don't Revere The Bearer Of Good Info," CarlShulman. LessWrong, 21 Mar 2009. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tSgcorrgBnrCH8nL3/don-t-revere-the-bearer-of-good-info

Transcript

Intro

Anthea 0:12

Welcome to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and the Limits of Rationality. This is a podcast where I go chapter by chapter through Eliezer Yudkowski's epic fan pic fanfic, HP Moore, and explain to my friends what I learned about rationality, AI, cognitive biases, and maybe myself. Uh welcome. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm very, very excited. Um, today I am joined uh by my usual guests, slash co-hosts, slash housemates, Jake.

SPEAKER_06 0:44

Hello.

Anthea 0:44

Alisa.

SPEAKER_06 0:45

No.

Anthea 0:46

And uh I'm very excited to welcome in uh our our guest Ernie Piper today.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yes.

Anthea 0:54

Hi, Ernie! Ernie, thank you so much for coming on here. Um tell me about yourself. Tell me what's your deal.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, I've been trying to figure that out for years. I wish I could help you with that.

Anthea 1:08

I can, I mean, I can I can I'll I'll set you up a little bit. Um you and I have known each other for since we were kids uh back in Alaska. Um we went to we both went to a weird uh alternative public school. Um we were both we were in similar theater programs through the years. And um and we were both kid magicians who were featured on uh the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. At the age of what, twelve?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

I think. I don't know.

Anthea 1:44

Around around there. Around there. Um so that's our background together. But then you were when when I started this podcast, you were like, I really want to be on this. So I'm really curious about like what's your what's your history with the subject matter?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Okay, so for many years I was a journalist. I'm not really a journalist anymore, but one of the things that I covered when I was uh, especially in the pandemic, was tech. And I was covering tech and misinformation and uh cult stuff and wacky things, and I got very interested in looking into the people who were building AI because they were very into this a bunch of associated call them belief systems, systems, call them religions. I don't really know what you'd call, but there's like uh rationalism, which is the subject today, but there's also tangential ones, which is uh ethical altruism. What is it? Effective altruism.

Anthea 2:46

We're gonna get into effective altruism today.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Singulitarianism. That one's quite weird.

Anthea 2:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Um they've been called the uh rather uh inelegantly the test real bundle of beliefs, which is like transhumanist something, something, something. I can't remember what all of them stand for. It has a it has a bundle.

Anthea 3:06

That's a new one to me. Okay.

Jake 3:07

It evolves into tresticool, I think, when you get it to level 32.

Anthea 3:10

That sounds right.

Jake 3:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

But basically, the reason I got interested in this is because the people who are building it, both at the like engineering level and at the CEO level running these companies, are all involved in these basically sci-fi ideologies. Like, let's all go to space, let's all build uh a million sentient computers, let's say. Let's upload ourselves to the cloud.

SPEAKER_04 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Let's like math what's the most ethical thing that we can do with our money, and then send mosquito nets to Africa. So it's like a lot of confusing, strange, contradictory things, some of which are good, some of which are bad, and some of which are just kind of strange. And that's like it's just an interest. It was an interest of mine that I was covering.

Anthea 3:55

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I think I yes, I think similarly, I'm like, we're little guys on the internet. And you and I were were talking about this a little bit uh beforehand, about how both of us, and I think I think everybody in this room, maybe not you, Elisa, because again, you grew up in an you're an urban elite, and it's true. As as compared to the rest of us who were growing up in semi-rural places, uh being very smart kids with access to the internet. Um Ernie, you and I were talking about how like why didn't we end up like deep in this weird little guy subculture? Um like and and what like like here we are some years out. Like, we we know people, I I know numerous people in different parts of my life who have ended up, you know, in this subculture to one degree or another. Um and like, why why not me? Why not me? I've got all the ingredients, you've got all the ingredients.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, uh it's a really good question because a lot of the people who got into this stuff, both both the people that we know from back home who got into this stuff and people that we bumped into later in life, yeah, you know, they were interested in fan fiction, in you know, uh internet culture before it was anybody else was doing it. They were interested in kind of science and math and sci-fi and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 5:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

And uh trying to distinguish themselves as wacky, weird outsiders and uh counterculture. So all of that stuff was all very appealing to me, and uh, as was the uh egoistic aspect of wanting to be the smartest person in the room. That's another part of that really attracted me. I was like, yeah, I wanted to.

Anthea 5:42

Yeah, yeah. I already know that I'm smarter than most of the people I'm around, and now I can prove it.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Yeah, exactly. I can use math to prove it. And my problem is I just don't have a good enough attention span to finish most of their really long blog posts. So they I just was like, ah man, catch the point. So I think that was the main you know, operational reason why I never like got too into it.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

I think if you know maybe if I'd been medicated, I would have, but well, here we are.

SPEAKER_06 6:13

Well, that's just one more reason to stay away from big pharma and all its works. That is a joke. But also, I do want to say something that occurred to me for the first time now, even though I don't know why it would have only now. But when we were going over this last time, something I neglected to mention too is oh goodness.

SPEAKER_04 6:30

How was that?

SPEAKER_06 6:31

Uh oh, one of your paintings that you one of your framed works that you have up only with command strips fell to the ground.

SPEAKER_04 6:38

Great.

SPEAKER_06 6:39

So uh I said that in a really judgmental way, but if you've been if you'd been around for the past 10 to 15 years in this house, you would understand. Jesus. Okay.

Anthea 6:50

What were you saying, Alisa?

Jake 6:52

Uh I'm just saying that like I'm feeling kind of chilly with all the shade over here.

SPEAKER_06 6:56

I'm just saying that command strips are usually rated for three pounds, but I don't think that's true. Anyway, I'm sorry, what I was saying, uh rationalism. The thing that didn't come up, and I'm surprised that it didn't, um, it no one's fault but mine, is that I'm also gonna throw it out there that maybe, so in addition to being, I mean, I'm a true urban elite because my family is Latino. Um and so as a non-white person that makes me even more urban elite. And I also think that like maybe that's just the rules. I didn't even know that. Um I think I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that broadly speaking, rationalism doesn't have a whole lot to offer brown people.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah.

Anthea 7:38

It's it's I I might I was actually th I I might say that it uh and I this might annoy you. Um I I think that it might uh fall along class lines slightly more than race lines, but because those are so closely correlated, you are probably correct. I think that the community is pretty white.

SPEAKER_06 8:01

And community would be the word there too. Like I think the the from what I understand so far of the sort of uh framework of rationalism, there's nothing to say that it can't be useful to somebody, like to anybody of any positionality. But that's the thing that I would also throw out there is like I was going through in my head, I was like, it's interesting because look, politically, if there are lefties listening to this, and I don't know who else would be listening, you have come across like a certain amount of polling data about Latinos and what maybe to you as a non-Latino a surprising amount of republicanism um or conservatism. Uh not surprising to us in the in the communities, but um uh and if you go back to the Bush years, it was like 50-50. Latinos had been like split pretty even for a long time. So when you let's think about that. Well, that's up into the left movement for us as a block. But um, but so I, you know, I would I was thinking, I was like, it's weird that I haven't run across any like Hispanic last names in this milieu. That's weird. There's normally a couple that I go, oh but uh none to be found.

Anthea 9:10

So far, yeah, yeah.

Jake 9:13

I think it once there's a certain density of internet white guys in a culture, yeah, they tend to like repel kind of literally and figuratively non-internet white guys. Yes. I feel like it kind of homogenizes the demographic.

Anthea 9:27

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think all of that is is extremely fair. Um yeah, yeah, I think as I've said before, like they're but for uh Y chromosome go I.

Jake 9:39

Like, so yeah, no, I decided if I had slightly different friends in high school and early college, like that's probably all it all it would have taken.

Anthea 9:46

Yeah, yeah. Um last question for you, Ernie. Have you read this fanfic?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

I have not read this fanfic. It um I'll be honest, uh never interested me. Yeah, I think the the first time I ever heard about it was way too late.

Anthea 10:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool, great, good. We're all coming in cold. Love that. Um, fantastic. So let's get into the actual story in that case. The story so far.

Recap

Anthea 10:22

Um as we've discussed in the past, uh, in the world of HP Moore, Harry James Potter, Evans Varys was raised by his aunt Petunia, and the biochemistry professor she polled by being magically transformed into a more symmetrical version of herself than the original books. Um She got magic Botox. She got magic Botox. She got she got magic lipo, whatever. Um Botox is probably more like it, uh, because she's still alive. Uh she he grew up in a in a household that valued skepticism, the scientific method, and science fiction. Um he has been up to this point, he has been convinced of the reality of magic by Professor McGonagall. Um, escorted to Diagon Alley to get his school supplies, uh, gotten a lore dump about Voldemort, the graphic crimes of the Death Eaters, uh, and the circumstances of his biological parents' deaths. And now he and McGonagall are headed to Gringouts to pick up some spending money so that he can get his school supplies. Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Oh, Ernie, you're gonna get I'm so pumped for this scene. I've I cannot wait. Oh my god.

Jake 11:23

I'd say uh Voldemort and the graphic circumstances of death is my favorite spin-off movie that they've done.

Anthea 11:28

Yeah, it's probably better than Fantastic Beasts 2. So I haven't seen any of those movies. Um, a couple of notes from me before we proceed. Uh I try not to read every word of the original fic on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

I I would not expect you to.

Anthea 11:48

Yeah, I mean, partly it's for the sake of time, and partly it's respect towards Zkowski's intellectual property rights and protection of my own fair use. Uh right. Um I so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to highlight parts of the fic that I think are the most interesting, whether that's philosophically or in fandom terms or in writing terms, um, while maintaining the sense of the story. Uh and I'm trying to be fair about this. That is a subjective measure. People listening to this who who know the fic may disagree with what I choose to skip or highlight. I always link the the chapter that we're reading uh in the show notes so you can read along, and I encourage that.

Jake 12:29

And really, this is a gift to any potential hate listeners because it gives them something to say, well, actually Yes, exactly.

Anthea 12:36

In this line that she skipped.

Jake 12:38

Yeah, and there's nothing more precious than self-righteous outrage. So it truly is a gift.

Anthea 12:43

Yes, exactly. You are welcome. Um, and I'm bringing this up uh because there were some spots in in chapters four and five where I was struggling with cutting because I felt like every paragraph had something interesting in it. Oh god. Um or was relevant to later plot points or something. Um, so you know, there might be a little more text than there is in has been in some of the earlier chapters. Uh I do my best. Um also nobody cares, probably, but I do always start with the first line of the chapter and end with the last line of the chapter.

SPEAKER_06 13:21

I care because as I've mentioned several times before, I believe that those little epigraphs are clues, and I'm gonna figure this shit out. Yes, yes.

Anthea 13:29

Jankowski also believes that there are clues and Easter eggs all over the place. Also, as we get into this, I wanna say, I want to point out that in the author's note, um, he says that it's generally agreed that the fic starts to hit its stride at chapter five. So theoretically, today we're gonna record chapter five and get to the part where it gets good.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

I cannot wait to be converted to the religion of rationalism. Let's lock in.

Anthea 14:00

Let's go. I you know, it's gonna be a great day.

Chapter 4 close reading

Anthea 14:05

Chapter 4. The efficient market hypothesis. Disclaimer. JK Rowling is watching you from where she waits eternally in the void between worlds.

Jake 14:13

Jesus.

Anthea 14:14

Holy shit, that's the truest thing he's ever said. Authors note, as others have noted, the novels seem inconsistent in the apparent purchasing power of a galleon. I'm picking a consistent value and sticking with it. Five pounds sterling to the galleon doesn't square with seven galleons for a wand and children using hand-me-down wands.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

How would you how would he know? It's fake! It's there's no real prices! All the things are fake! What? Sorry, I'm I'm I didn't mean to interrupt.

SPEAKER_04 14:41

Nope, you're good.

Jake 14:42

No, I I agree. He does not know the you know demand graph for a wand. So there's really no way to That's true.

SPEAKER_06 14:48

Okay, I'm gonna steal from uh one of my uh one of my favorite YouTubers on this topic, um, Lily Simpson, who I believe talks in her 10-hour Harry Potter video about how I've watched multiple times.

Jake 15:02

Yeah, I've gotten 20 minutes into that video multiple times.

SPEAKER_06 15:05

I think I think if you skip around in the chapters and find a part that you're like specifically interested in, that might work better.

Jake 15:10

Oh yeah, no, it it's it's not a comment of quality of the video, it's a comment of quality of my attention.

SPEAKER_06 15:15

But uh I believe that, and if she doesn't, there's definitely another video essayist who does point out that like magic is real, so why isn't there a post-scarcity economy? Yeah. Yeah. So like if we're talking about like what makes sense in terms of the economy, I do think this is very interesting that a rationalist who's all about creating everything from first principles didn't go, well, if magic is real, then why is why is the economy even shaped like this? If you can just make stuff.

Jake 15:45

Because even literal magic can't make us think of something that isn't capitalism.

SPEAKER_06 15:49

I think that's the real answer. Well, that's what Mark Fisher would say. Um but uh uh I I just think that that's interesting that he stopped at like, I think a wand should be either more or less expensive. Like this currency system doesn't scale. Because here in the real world, things always cost an amount of money that makes sense. Like insulin.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

If if I'm recalling my Harry Potter correctly, if we can go back to the source texts here, when all of the food appears in the Great Hall, everybody, you know, it's portrayed as if it's by magic. And then you learn in the later books that it's you know slave labor that makes all of the food and then it appears. So I don't know if we're we are in a post-scarcity economy in this world. Just to you know, be devil's advocate here. We've got you know uh a large labor class of uh of uh of uh uh racialized groups that's making all of the food in the kitchen. So uh you know, you can still have any can work that synatysis here and that there's you know still value extraction coming out of the uh the labor here.

Anthea 16:58

I don't think this has any parallels to technology that appears like magic in our current system.

Jake 17:03

Yeah, I was gonna say it it might still be it might still be post-scarcity and they're just choosing to reintroduce scarcity. Yeah. For for the love of elf exploitation.

SPEAKER_06 17:12

Yeah, yeah. I uh because okay, I could be I could definitely be wrong. I just thought that I remembered um also at the risk of making this just a behind the bastard supercut podcast, what you're I mean, Ernie, what you're describing is how Thomas Jefferson's house worked. Like yikes. Yikes. But uh, but um oh yeah, I thought I remembered um that Molly conjures some food or conjures stuff at a certain point um out of nothing. So, and I thought that that idea of like conjuring stuff out of nothing was actually like fairly established as a type of magic that you can do.

Anthea 17:53

I I genuinely can't remember specifically, but I do I mean it does seem like there are a certain amount of uh of conjuration that one can do to use a DD term. Right conjuration. I look straight at Jake.

Jake 18:08

Yeah, I mean conjure food and water is a first level spell. But um, I mean my guess is as with everything in this universe, is probably wildly inconsistent.

Anthea 18:17

I think so. And that I that's Rowling's fault. That's not your real answer. That's the real answer.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

She was just, you know, she was she was goofing up and making a fun universe for kids, so nothing had to be consistent, you know. It's not for a very specific kind of kid. I want to hear what Yakowski says about this. Okay. I do, I do.

Anthea 18:34

Let's give him a chance. Uh the epigraph for this chapter is world domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimization.

Jake 18:43

Wait, the J.K. Rowling watching from the ether wasn't the epigraph? No. Okay.

Anthea 18:48

That's just the disclaimer.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Alright.

Anthea 18:52

Excuse me. Heaps of gold galleons, stacks of silver sickles, piles of bronze nuts. Nuts? Nuts?

Jake 19:01

Newts.

Anthea 19:02

Nutts. Let's stick with newts.

Jake 19:03

I request we call them nuts. I'm raising my hand.

SPEAKER_06 19:12

I'm giving a big thumbs down. Oh, Harry.

Jake 19:14

Alright. The the the two white masculine people are raising their hands. That's the tiebreaker of the.

SPEAKER_06 19:19

I have no choice but to uh I have a deep voice with authority.

Jake 19:23

I'll keep I'll keep talking until I get my way.

Anthea 19:25

There's that curse of me. Oh nuts! Piles of bronze newts. Harry stood there and stared with his mouth open at the family vault. He had so many questions he didn't know where to start. From just outside the door of the vault, Professor McGonagall watched him, seeming to lean casually against the wall, but her eyes intent. Well, that made sense. Being plopped in front of a giant heap of gold coins was a test of character so pure it was archetypal. Now, an interesting thing I note about Iadkowski is his obsession with archetypes and tropes. An earlier draft of this script was initially written with how highly he values archetypes and tropes in the sense that they played a large role in his thinking about the world, uh, and in the sense that they play a large role in his thinking about the world, I stand by that. However, yesterday, I was reading a post of his from December 2025, where he wrote, quote, this is a this is a post where he was asked where he's talking about being asked by journalists how are you coping with the end of the world? As context. Actual less wrong readers also sometimes ask me how I deal emotionally with the end of the world. The first and oldest reason I stay sane is that I am an author and above tropes. Going mad in the face of the oncoming end of the world is a trope. I consciously see those culturally transmitted patterns that inhabit thought processes, aka tropes, both in fiction and in the narratives that people try to construct around their lives and force their lives into. The trope of somebody going insane as the world ends does not appeal to me as an author, including in my role as the author of my own life. It seems obvious, cliche, predictable, and contrary to the ideals of writing intelligent characters. Nothing about it seems fresh or interesting. It doesn't tempt me to write, and it doesn't tempt me to be. End quote. Now I have found myself in the position of trying to defend rationality when I tell people about this podcast, because it is important to me that I approach this with more than only snark on my side.

Jake 21:28

That's what I'm here for.

Anthea 21:29

Yeah, that's why I have you guys. But then Yudkowski goes and says, when faced with circumstances that are driving people insane, I choose to be less boring and more sane than those people. And I'm like, fine! Fine! At least at least he does acknowledge quote, doing crazy things because your brain started underproducing a neurotransmitter is a problem. If there's a medication that directly fixes the problem, that is probably easier and faster and more effective. End quote, than clearer thinking, but he also says in that post that sanity is a skill issue, and there is context to that that clarifies that he means this as your problems are solvable via improving your skills. But it feels like he was baiting me personally to say mean shit about him.

SPEAKER_06 22:18

I think it's probably a good thing that there's no mental instabilities that uh take the form of certain tropes or patterns.

Anthea 22:26

Definitely! Definitely!

Jake 22:28

I appreciate that he took five paragraphs to say I'm built different.

unknown 22:32

Yes!

Anthea 22:33

It's longer than five paragraphs.

Jake 22:35

Oh wow. I can see, yeah, definitely not a self-insert character. No no no. This tedious child doesn't sound anything like this bloviating.

Anthea 22:47

Um, it made me so mad. It made me so mad. Um, I really am trying to be a Libra about this and and approach this with fair-mindedness, but like sometimes he makes it really hard on me personally.

Jake 23:02

Right. I don't know enough about astrology. I'm a cancer. Does that mean I should be sad about this?

Anthea 23:07

Yes. You should have big emotions about it, I think.

Jake 23:09

Okay, cool.

Anthea 23:11

Water sign. Yes.

Jake 23:12

Water sign.

Anthea 23:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My sister's a cancer.

Jake 23:14

I feel very damp about this.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

I'm a cancer. I'm a cancer.

SPEAKER_06 23:17

Oh my god. Look at you. I'm a Virgo, which anybody who's into astrology has already guessed by this episode.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Uh being a cancer means that you take um five paragraphs to say I'm actually the smartest author in the world, and that's why you should listen to me.

Anthea 23:38

Yeah. Yeah. And I eschew tropes. I think they're dumb. Okay. Okay. Thank you for let that's my that's my like that was what made me mad getting into this. Okay, back to the text. Are these coins the pure metal? Harry said finally. What? Hissed the goblin Grip Hook, who was waiting near the door. Are you questioning the integrity of Grainguts, Mr. Potter Evans Varis? Um, Grip Hook is so secondary to the bulk of this scene that the awkward anti-Semitic overtones are like kinda barely there. This is how we win!

Jake 24:18

Yeah, we we solve anti-Semitism by underrepresentation.

SPEAKER_06 24:24

Just forget about them, non-Jewish people.

Anthea 24:27

It's okay. Um, I uh I do want to note, uh, because it came up in the previous episode that Grip Hook is the first person in the wizarding world to consistently refer to Harry by his actual legal name, which is Mr. Potter Evans Varus. So Harry quizzes Grip Hook about the practicalities of wizard currency, and Grip Hook informs him that one, the coins are all made from the pure metals, gold galleons, silver sickles, and brawn newts, and that all the coins are minted by the goblins. Uh, this leads Harry to ask, I mean, suppose I came in here with a ton of silver. Could I get a ton of sickles made from it? For a fee, Mr. Pot and Potter Evans Varys. The goblin watched him with glittering eyes. The the like weird the the weird overtones aren't absent. They're just less uh they're just lesser.

SPEAKER_06 25:19

I wish that I do wish, honestly, like I I think as with so many things, Dimension 20 got this right of having like, you know, if they were like a dragon-y type of creature, I think that would be great. Gold is a very spiritual thing for my people. Yes. That's that's that's a quote for one of the dragonborn characters in Dimension 20, so.

Anthea 25:41

Uh uh for a fee, Mr. Potter Evans Varis. The goblin watched him with glittering eyes. For a certain fee, where would you find a ton of silver, I wonder? I was speaking hypothetically, Harry said. For now, at any rate. So how much would you charge in fees as a practi a fraction of the whole weight? Griphook's eyes were intent. I would have to consult my superiors. Give me a wild guess. I won't hold Gringotts to it. A twentieth part of the medal would well pay for the coining. Harry nodded. Thank you very much, Mr. Griphook. So not only is the wizarding economy almost completely decoupled from the muggle economy, no one here has ever heard of arbitrage. I have a long explanation of arbitrage. Would you guys like to hear it? I actually would, because I don't I have a bad idea.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

I'm not sure where you're gone with this.

Anthea 26:31

Uh I mean, like, part of part of what I've what I'm doing with this is like theoretically, I Gadkowski says that like you can learn I it's a didactic work, right? So when he brings up something like arbitrage, I'm like, alright, you want me to learn about this? What is it? Um I'd heard of it, I'd heard the word before. Hi, Katie. I'd heard the word before. Um I didn't really know what it was. Um, I went to my favorite source for this podcast, r slash explain like I'm five. Um, and a deleted user gave the best answer in the post, uh, to my mind, quote, arbitrage is when you take advantage of a price difference between markets. A simple example is an order. Suppose you see a store selling tomatoes for one dollar each. Down the block, someone is buying tomatoes for $150 each. As an arbitrageur, you would buy the tomatoes at $1, then sell them for $150 to the other guy, thereby making a nice 50 cent profit on each tomato. So you buy low someplace, you buy low in one market, you sell high in another market.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

So I just want to reel back to the part where they said chapter five is where this starts getting good. This is chapter four.

Anthea 27:42

This is chapter four.

unknown 27:45

Yeah.

Anthea 27:46

This is right before it starts getting good. This is right before it starts getting good.

SPEAKER_06 27:49

So maybe what we're in is like the nadir of and then it's gonna really take off in chapter five. So let's, you know, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

All right. All right.

Anthea 27:59

A lot of arbitrage is uh is done with currency. Um and and those examples make my eyes glaze over.

SPEAKER_06 28:06

But like Sure, but you can do arbitrage with vintage clothing. If you find something, if you find something at a local Goodwill, yeah, that's like that's like cool. Um, but like let's say for instance, I've had experiences at vintage stores where I was like, you guys, this is a really nice designer. Like, why are you selling it for 19 bucks? And they said, well, you know, it's a bunch of university students around here, they're not really familiar with the designer. Um, so you could take it out of one market where broadly speaking there's not a whole lot of appreciation for the value of something and then resell it on eBay for $400. Yeah. That is also called the Depop method.

Anthea 28:40

Yeah, yeah. I interested, because I would also call that flipping, right? Well, it is flipping, but in a way, like it's the same concept. Yeah, same concept. Yes, but French. Yes, but French, they've got a different word for everything. Um, point being, uh, Harry is rapidly roughing out a system whereby he could convert raw silver to sickles, convert sickles to galleons, bring gold galleons to the muggle world to convert to raw silver, and end up with more silver than you started with because the galleons to sickles ratio is stupid compared to the gold to silver ratio in the muggle economy. Uh for the record, when I wrote uh when I first wrote this script at the end of Q1 of 2026, the gold-silver ratio is about 64 to 1. So you can buy an ounce of gold for the same price as 64 ounces of silver. If the ratio was 17 to 1, which is the ratio of uh of sickles to galleons, it's 17 sickles to one galleon. If you if the ratio was 17 to 1, silver would be considered vastly overpriced.

SPEAKER_06 29:51

Okay, also look, I don't want to be a jerk and I don't want to defend J.K. Rowling. But is there does she say that the I mean the thing about it is that this these books were written, what, in the 90s? Yeah. So like we would have to assume any kind of monetary system, like, doesn't necessarily have fixed valuations in that way, right? Like, I mean, the price of gold goes up, the price of silver goes down, like, etc. etc. So, like, is there any reason to think that all of this currency has like retains the same ratio over time?

Jake 30:23

I I promise you the weird lump of hate in a human suit that is J.K. Rowling did not put that amount of thought that you just put into the currency system.

Anthea 30:31

Here's here's the th okay, Ernie, you're you're in the UK. But the UK decimalized, right? Like, you the the UK is using pounds and and pence, but it's like a hundred pence to a pound, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

And that that's the thing with sickles and newts and gallions, is that it's a it's an extended joke on how goofy the the pence, shillings, and pounds system was, which is it it's about the same. It was like sixteen shillings to the pound and God knows how many pennies to the shilling. Right. It was nonsense.

Anthea 31:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Absolute nonsense way of counting.

Anthea 31:08

One thing that I have very frequently had to do as a dramaturg, uh doing research for various shows to uh help actors out is help them understand pre-decimalization uh British money. And like, what does it mean when when Bottom says that uh Duke Theseus will give us a shilling a day? Like, what's the buying power of a shilling, etc., etc.? Um so right, yeah, it's a so I think I think we do have reason to think that like the in the same way that like a we there's always ten dimes to a dollar.

SPEAKER_06 31:43

Oh okay, no, no, I see what you're doing. Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Anthea 31:46

Yeah. The value of the gold and the silver is in in the muggle economy, is what Harry is interested in.

SPEAKER_06 31:54

Oh, right.

Anthea 31:56

Um arbitrage is theoretically risk-free because it isn't speculative. It's always based on the prices of things in the markets right now. Um uh it also tends to make prices on different markets converge because once the market as an entity figures out that people can buy cheap one place and sell high another place, the cheap prices will rise to meet demand and the high prices will lower to meet supply. And I think this is what people like Yitkowski mean about arbitraging out market efficient inefficiencies because God forbid the market be inefficient.

unknown 32:31

Right.

Anthea 32:32

So Harry speculates internally about arbitraging the wizardeed economy because their currency system is complete nonsense. He also considers that maybe their method of only using hard cash that you have to withdraw from a vault in order to spend is better than the muggle system. Then he thinks, on the other hand, sorry, then he thinks, back to the text, quote, on the other hand, one competent hedge fundee could probably own the whole wizarding world within a week. Harry filed away this notion in case he ever ran out of money, or had a week free. And here I think it's impossible to read this without thinking about the ways that rationality and effective altruism are intertwined.

Jake 33:09

Yeah, I honestly felt physically ill hearing that line.

Anthea 33:14

Yeah. Um what's uh Alright, I'll I'll I'll go through my script here. The Less Wrong article about uh effective altruism describes it as, quote, a movement trying to invest time and money in causes that do the most good per some unit of effort. The label applies broadly, including a philosophy, a community, a set of organizations, and set of behaviors. Likewise, it also sometimes means how to donate effectively to charities, choose one's career, do the most good per dollar, do good in general, or ensure the most good happens. All of these different framings have slightly different implications. The basic concept behind EA is that one would really struggle to donate 100 times more money or time to charity than you currently do, but spending a little time researching who to donate to could have an impact on roughly this order of magnitude. The same argument works for doing good with your career or volunteer hours. End quote. So I I think effective altruism is a pretty interesting concept at its core. Like a lot of rational stuff. I'm like, there's nothing like I think that's got got something behind it, right? Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Okay. My my biggest beef with effective altruism, you know, has always been that it envisions a perfectly apolitical world. And they envision that the only way that people can affect change uh in wealthy Western countries is by spending money.

SPEAKER_04 34:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

So it takes every uh political dimension of a person, their community, whatever, and turns it into you have to make as much money as possible and donate it to the best causes you can. And there were lots of people in the effective altruist community who explicitly made that argument, like go work at a hedge fund. Like Sam Benton Freed, for instance, was is the biggest guy who wanted to do that.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

Yeah, yeah.

unknown 35:10

Yeah.

Jake 35:11

I I feel like a lot of them forget that second step though, and they hear, make the most money possible. Gotcha.

Anthea 35:16

Well, this so this is I I spent a while down this rabbit hole trying to get uh get some some uh visibility on this, right? Um because yeah, if you know two things about effective altruism, you probably know what you mentioned earlier, Ernie, about sending malaria nets to Africa because you can you can save a lot of lives with wait, I think I wrote something down here. Yeah. Um you can, you know, spending I'm making these numbers up, but like spending $100 to buy a hundred malaria nets will save more lives per dollar than spending a hundred dollars to buy 50 cans of beans for your local food bank. Um even though that $100 in your local community might feel more important to you. You know, 2009 Less Wrong post titled Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately, Kowski talks about how that kind of local personal impact, warm fuzzies, can be Utilons?

SPEAKER_06 36:20

Warm fuzzies? Is he is he sure he couldn't have chosen a more condescending way to frame that?

Anthea 36:25

Definitely. I've listened if he put some work into it, but he doesn't have to be a good one.

SPEAKER_06 36:29

If he just invested a few hours, I think he could have been a hundred times more condescending.

Anthea 36:36

Skill issue. It's a skill issue. Um uh he's he says like you don't have to stop doing those because warm fuzzies have utility to you personally, um, but that you should optimize your spending for maximum utility. Spend more money purchasing U-talons by donating to a charity than you do purchasing warm fuzzies. Um and that's that's effective altruism. More or less. Spend more money on utility than you do on things that make you just feel good. Um that's if you only know two things about EA. If you know one thing about EA, you probably know about Sam Bankman-Fried. Um, a man who gambled with a bunch of people other people's money and is now in jail, serving serving a sentence of 25 to life for various fraud charges. Extremely funny to me. The first sentence on his Wikipedia page describes him as, quote, an American fraudster and con artist who was convicted of fraud and related crimes in November 2023. The first sentence of Bernie Madoff's wiki page calls him a financier before calling him a con artist.

SPEAKER_06 37:44

Wow. Maybe someday SBF will get to financier. Maybe. Um, I do, I do actually, I want to do something a little unusual for this podcast. And I want to steel man effective altruism a little bit. Sure. That's what I'm gonna try to do. Yeah, all right. But I'm gonna do that. And by the way, there's a rug pull coming. Just like with a lot of effective altruism. Um so uh you know, okay, I have had to think about fundamentally effective altruism a lot in my own life because I strive to do as much good as I can for as long as I can.

Anthea 38:20

With limited resources.

SPEAKER_06 38:21

With limited resources. Um I'm not about to become a programmer. But like that means that you start to think about things like sustainability. Like, what if if you go into an organization, for instance, to do volunteering and you flake out, then they have to onboard another volunteer. They have to sometimes, I mean, I'm in I'm in uh in organizations where you have to pass a background test, you have to take several hours of training. Um, and so that means that those resources, if I flake out, are all gone. So you have to think about okay, it's actually valuable for me to stay engaged with this organization over time. So like then that leads you to things like stuff like warm fuzzies can be that's I I I could be wrong, but I read that as Yudkowski kind of saying that that's something that's just sort of like a byproduct, like steam or something like that, or like like it's extrinsic, like but warm fuzzies feed back into your into your ability to keep doing the work that you're doing.

Anthea 39:17

That is actually the argument you can do. Oh good. Oh good, okay. He calls them he calls them willpower restorers. Um and but I I think thinking of it as like, you know, he he the example he gives in the post is that he's like, I saw I was walking around my neighborhood and I saw a guy's uh car trunk was open and I didn't see anybody around, and I went up and I knocked on their door and was like, Hey, do you is your car trunk supposed to be open? Um and he's like, That's a that's a very minor form of altruism, but it is altruistic. Um and it made me feel good, and it sort of and I don't think he says this explicitly, but the way I read it is as sort of like a way of reaffirming to yourself like I have a core value of compassion towards my fellow man.

SPEAKER_04 40:05

Right.

SPEAKER_06 40:06

Sure. And I think also feeling connected to your community is one of those intangibles that ends up creating really, really positive benefits. Thank you. That ends up creating really positive benefits that are maybe less easy to math out, but that kind of enmeshment becomes really valuable. Yeah. Okay, so I'm glad to hear that. So then after that, one thing that start I start to think about with the factor of altruism is like, okay, well, it comes down to how you're defining good. And that can mean and over what period of time. So one thing for me is that over time, it is good to have many qualified uh teachers, especially at the elementary level and the pre-K level. Um, and it's good to have lots of quality carers, um, like you know, people who are, you know, what nurses, nurses, yeah, nurses, social workers, home health aids, child care, all that kind of stuff. So then I might go, okay, well, is that the kind of career that I can do? If not, what might I pursue to make that happen? Oh, well, I would want to advocate for strong unions and for, you know, policies that would make that kind of job more, more uh doable for people. And so uh I even think like, okay, well, what about people who want to become, you're a great, you know, you're a great uh engineer and you see like, oh, there's all kinds of things I could do as an engineer. So um one thing that you could do is go, I'm gonna like tutor kids and and create a bunch of new engineers um and and pass that skill set on to the future. Um, or like I'm gonna be an environmental activist and like, you know, whatever, like to preserve the environment for future generations. The thing that's weird to me, like, all of this to me seems like it could come out of effective altruism. Yeah. It's weird that what seems to come out of effective altruism is only the replication of a rapacious capitalism.

Anthea 41:59

So you are correct on all fronts, I would say. Because the uh one of the one of the sources that I used for a lot of this section was um the organization 80,000 Hours, which is uh an effective altruist, like an effective altruism-based career advice organization. Um and they so they're like you have 80,000 hours in your career, you care about having like a positive impact on the world. How do you do that? And they they do actually like advocate to a certain extent, to a certain extent, there's some caveats here. They they do say like maybe you want your, you know, like a career in communication could be really, really impactful. Um let me see if I can find my specific notes on this. Um uh yes, I have I have a section that says because I know Elisa is going to ask. Yes! Um, so because like what you're talking about is like, why not be or or the way 80,000 hours might hear your question is why not become a doctor? Like a doctor is someone who who like why not why not make that my career? Why not spend my 80,000 hours doing that? And their argument for doctors specifically, and I think we can probably extrapolate to other careers that you're mentioning here, um, though I they don't mention them specifically, so I don't want to say I I'm trying to be very, very, very specific. Um in the question of like, I wanna I wanna save lives. I wanna, I wanna be, I wanna be a a net good on the world, so I want to be a doctor. They would say in a Western country like the UK or The US, there are already a lot of doctors.

SPEAKER_06 44:03

Ooh, untrue.

Anthea 44:06

And so they argue that you will have less impact than you think because it is already a well-served market. And if your interests lie in the medical field, you might have more social impact defined as providing greater benefit for more people or over a longer period of time by going into medical research that'll yield a new mRNA vaccine for HIV. Right? Than uh because they've mathed out that a doctor on average actually only saves about three lives per their in the course of their career.

SPEAKER_06 44:45

I am so curious to learn how they derived this.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

I will link you to that because I'm not gonna go into that math here. There's no reason I mean the reason they think they can mash it out, this is the that's what how can you mass out how many lives a doctor in any given country saves per year? You cannot. You cannot. That is not a thing that is possible to know. Like, can you see into the future? No. Can you like predict uh what exact illnesses for what exact people you're gonna come in? And then there's also the other question of like, is it more important? Is it saving more lives to be like a trauma surgeon, an ER surgeon versus like a pediatric specialist or whatever? Like, also an incredibly stupid question. Like all these forms of medical intervention are vital. There's no reason to be like, well, this is more important in some objective sense of saving lives than any other form. Because we need both. We need we need people who will take care of the old, we need people who will take care of the young, we need people who will take care of medium-aged people, you know?

unknown 45:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Middles.

Anthea 45:57

The mid. We need we need care for the mid.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

And so uh saying like this is more effective than Neltz, I think it more betrays to your point about uh repeating rapacious exploitative capitalism. The reason I think that uh it gets to that is because it takes some assumptions at uh the root level, which is that I want to be the most important special boy, and I want to do the most for the most people. But also, to be rational, I am an insignificant little worm, and my feelings don't matter, and my community doesn't matter. So what only matters are the numbers. How do I get a number that says that I'm a good boy? And that's kind of I think where it comes from.

Jake 46:43

Now I think that's kind of my issue with effective altruism, and honestly, a lot of issues that arise when society is run by techno oligarchs is that whenever there's an issue, the first step is like, all right, how do we reduce this to numbers that can be optimized by a program? And that immediately, you know, screws with a lot of issues that that cannot be done with. Yeah. Where like things that have, you know, fuzzy complications that cannot eventually end up in a, you know, executable.

SPEAKER_04 47:18

Right, right.

Jake 47:19

And like I feel like altruism is one of those things where like if your approach to it is start with, all right, well, let's first turn this into a computer program, it's like, no, you have already failed at the very step zero, you've already fucked it up.

SPEAKER_01 47:35

I think that's that's so dead right, Jake. I think, and this is the other point of that's exactly it, how it repeats uh exploitation, is that optimizing things, you know, like I want to make this more efficient. That's exactly what markets do. That's exactly what corporations do.

Anthea 47:52

That's the name of this chapter, is the efficient market hypothesis.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Yeah, exactly. And they're like, I want to make this company run more efficiently and have the number go up. I want it to do better numbers. And those, first of all, corporations are oftentimes authoritarian organizations. They're run by a CEO and a board, and they're making decisions based on profit. That's the point. And it's not necessarily democratic unless it's like a heavily unionized industry or there's, you know, public.

Anthea 48:22

I tell you what, I work in a I work for a union, I work a union job, and it still feels pretty authoritarian.

SPEAKER_05 48:29

Yeah.

Anthea 48:30

We're we have we have, you know, my union gives us more bargaining. On the flip side, it's pretty authoritarian. Management has a lot of opinions about how things should be done, but also when I'm like, eh, you don't know anything, the union has my back. So there's that. Anyway, sorry, continue.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

But that's exactly it. You know, like if there's some democratic pushback, then you're like, well, maybe optimization is not what we need in this because there's some other value that you're overlooking on purpose.

SPEAKER_06 49:00

Right. And I will also say that um, hey, I'm not opposed to optimization necessarily or numbers. Um, as somebody who has worked in American healthcare serving primarily Medicaid members for about five years now. Oh, I think six. Gosh, time flies. Um coming up on seven. Uh um I will say that we actually do have a type of medical care that we know that if we invest more dollars in it, we get way higher population health. And that is preventive health services. That means going into your to your PCP, which is your primary care provider, who might be a doctor, might be an internist, might be uh uh an RN, might be um a physician's assistant is the term, but they're totally good at like. So that's something where it's like actually, um the problem there is not that it's not efficient in terms of if we do X thing, Y comes out, but the process of it also is messy. I think there's also an aesthetic to the idea of optimization of like let's do a program and run it, like let's make authoritarian decisions that feels as if it's more efficient than it even necessarily is, because the process of administering primary care is awful. Sure. There's a lot of physician burnout, there's a lot of paperwork, there's a lot of random stuff. And I mean, in terms of life saving, the other thing I did want to bring up is like I remember um uh so I was diagnosed with anorexia as a teenager, and one of my uh one of my doctors, um, I did not know her name, so I just called her Lady Doctor in my in my uh in my teenage blog posts. She was very, very cognizant of my weight, and she wouldn't let me lose weight without grilling me about it. And that was really helpful because I know that that I'm making it sound like she was like that that would have been harmful to my mental health. Yeah but really no, she was she was looking out for weight loss that in other teen girls might have been seen as trivial, but that she was taking as early warning signs that I was getting, you know, sicker. And so because she was looking out for me like that, like we did more interventions as a family. But did she save my life? I don't know.

Anthea 51:17

Right, right. Now I wanna push back slightly or at least complicate the argument about like, oh, but it's all based on optimization, because I think that there are some actual, like part of or or I w I wanna I wanna yeah, I wanna complicate this question um because one like okay, there's an interesting underlying ethical question that uh for effective altruists, which or or the the ethical question is should you care more about someone who is in front of you than someone who is a hundred miles away from you? And effective altruists say no, I should care about a person who is in front of me and a person who is a hundred miles away from me equally. A person in, and that's part of why like a lot of effective altruists, you know, why the like malaria nets is such a a like like a go-to example, because it's like there are people in the global south who are who I should ethically care about exactly as much as the people in my own community. And like it is very and it is comparatively trivial for me to make a huge difference in the life of someone in the global south, than for me to make a difference in to the life of someone in my community in a high cost of living place like Seattle or London, right? Like I can like my single dollar can it's that, it's it's kind of the like for the price of a cup of coffee a day, you can feed a starving child in Sudan.

SPEAKER_06 52:58

Moral arbitrage.

Anthea 53:00

Honestly, yeah. I think uh yes, I have something in here about how earning to give is a carbon credit scheme, right? Like as far like a moral carbon credit scheme. I think moral arbitrage is a great way to put it. Like you are, that's exactly it. You are buying utility, uh, you are buying moral utility uh in in a cheap market so that you can you can have that. I don't know, I don't know. I can't, I'm I'm thrown off the dome, but I know I'm like, you're right, yes, there's something here.

SPEAKER_06 53:34

And that's fine for them is choose it. But as Ernie pointed out, like what we really need, and if we have to be markets about it, like what's the best kind of stock portfolio? It's one that's diversified. So um, like we need people who are doing all kinds of different work, right? Which means that at a certain point you have to be like, okay, we have actually enough people who've decided to do this hedge funds for malaria nets thing, so now we're not saying that anymore. Like, you know what I mean? Right, yeah, yeah.

Jake 54:00

Well, yeah, I I mean I feel like I I like I can appreciate effective altruism when it stays inside the philosophy vacuum and doesn't get introduced to the reality of reality. Because it's like the the mal to go back to the malaria net example, like that's that's something that like it's totally true, and also it ignores globalization and like all of the issues that come around that of like you know why like why is a dollar so good at buying malaria nets and delivering it to Africa?

Anthea 54:39

Right, as opposed to feeding the person living in a tent down the street on Capitol Hill.

Jake 54:44

Yeah, and it's yeah, yeah. And like it's also it's the same kind of philosophy that leads to like well, the most efficient way to feel my fuel my body is to eat teaspoons of cane sugar. Because like in terms of money to calories, like you can't beat that. But and and like that example, there's so many other side reasons why that's a terrible idea. Sure. Like there's other complicating issues. It's like, sure, like dollar to calorie efficiency, that's the best you can do. Sure. But why did we make that the criteria?

SPEAKER_06 55:21

Sure, sure. And also, I think, you know, one of the things that does happen with the whole mosquito net model is that it's like in a number of these countries, we went from extractive colonialist empires to just a lot of like charity in. And the problem there is that, um, and also, you know, the IMF coming in and saying, like, you know, we would like to have you do uh an economy that's favorable to our economy, so extractive under another name. Um, this is very, very, very high level, very generalized, obviously, you know, all that. But but then what can happen if you are only pouring money in or only pouring resources in that are tied to another country, is that then you diminish the state building capacity of the countries in in question.

Jake 56:06

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

That that's but you know in terms of the Harry Potter universe, I think it's probably good if we crash the wizard economy and make them dependent on the muggle economy because they're you know they're isolationist, they're kind of racist, it's not like a great society. We should maybe try and crash the goblin run thanks.

SPEAKER_06 56:24

No, okay, yes, I like this. Ernie's cooking. Ernie's cooking, let him cook.

Jake 56:29

Could we just send in like a special forces team and nab Dumbledore and like the back?

unknown 56:33

Yeah!

Anthea 56:34

Great! You got this is such a good point. We could just kidnap Minister Fudge. Yeah.

Jake 56:40

I don't know if we actually could. They could probably just teleport away.

Anthea 56:43

Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_06 56:44

That's true. But there's gotta be some kind of magic Faraday cage we can put him in.

Anthea 56:50

Get album on this. I do before thank you so much for that segue. Uh, before we move off of this, I do want to point out uh uh one interesting I this is this is a topic and I found it very interesting. I I think I am gonna I the idealized form of effective altruism, as like like we're saying, I think when when it stays in the realm of in in its philosophically pure form, I think it's a very good idea.

SPEAKER_06 57:20

Or when you're applying it to individual ethics and you're using lots of different metrics to define like what could be successful, what's the most good like for me. What's the most good for me that I can do and you're and you're not bringing in you're careful about the assumptions that you're bringing in.

Anthea 57:33

Yeah, and I want to be clear that like there's a di there is a diversity of thought about this within the community, and like even you know, 80,000 hours is like ultimately you have to decide what moral good means to you and what a fulfilling career looks like for you. We are here to give you some options and to like give you a perspective on here are some things that you could if you're having trouble with this decision, here are some things you could think about.

SPEAKER_06 58:02

Like I do read it from what they've qu we've quoted us a little bit like I mean look, we've done all the smart numbers reasoning to give you the actual best answer, but if you want to do your own thing, like Godspeed.

Anthea 58:14

Sure, sure. And like, and also, you know, there are uh 80,000 hours in the Center for Al Effective Altruism are like, hey, we recognize that there's a real possibility that people are gonna come in here like Sam Bankman-Fried. They are embarrassed about Sam Bankman-Fried, and they are like, hey, sorry about that.

SPEAKER_06 58:34

Well, we're united in one way.

Anthea 58:36

We made a mistake here platforming that guy. Um uh like, for example, they like they talk about earning to give, and they say, quote, if the harm done by the work offsets the good done by your donations, then that's clearly overall negative for the world and bad by any lights.

SPEAKER_06 58:54

Uh the Jimmy Savile equation, also.

Anthea 58:56

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 58:57

God damn it, behind the bastards again.

Anthea 58:59

Yeah, I know, I know. Uh uh, so they are yeah, so that and and they have stuff about like, hey, you might it one uh one pitfall here is that once you start if you're earning to give, especially, if you start making a lot of money, you might be like, hmm, I like all this money. What if I gave less? And so we encourage you to take a public oath that you're gonna give your money away, um, which has psychological uh uh data backing up that like making a public commitment to something tends to make it But it's not like a legal commitment. It's not a legal commitment, no.

Jake 59:39

Yeah, I mean they should make elaborate contraptions that like electrocute them if they don't give away enough to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

That would be the most efficient way style booby traps.

Jake 59:49

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 59:50

I have a fleet of little robots that steal my money and squirrel it away, so why can't you just say like we encourage you to set up an auto an auto-an auto pay?

Anthea 59:58

Yeah, yeah. Um, so they they are sort of like because they're rationalists, they have thought about some of this stuff, right? And they are like trying to set up, like, hey, we recognize a potential pitfall. Let's give you tools to just not even think about it. I think that's a lot of the thing about about a lot of rationalism for something that is like so based on reasoning things from first principles. Some of it really is like, we're gonna give you a better heuristic. Like, I think that's a lot of what effective altruism is doing is they're like, we're gonna give you a better heuristic for where to give your money. Um and those heuristics are going to be things like long-termism, and uh that's the that's the one that I keep thinking of.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:45

Um a really specific definition of long-termism, though, because from what I've heard, it's not very compatible with like the long-termism that I'm more familiar with and more like and Grockmore is like kind of indigenous long-termism.

Anthea 1:00:57

It's I mean there is kind of a similar like like think seven think in terms of seven generations, but the but the underlying idea is like if you are trying to do good for the most amount of people, there will be more people alive, like the lives of the of future people, there are more people in the future than there are right now, and therefore we should do things that benefit them.

Jake 1:01:20

But if we improve the lives of people in the past, that will have a much more bigger ripple of it.

Anthea 1:01:25

Yes.

Jake 1:01:25

Because like what Genghis Khan has two million descendants, if we make his life better, think how many people indirectly just by helping Genghis Khan.

Anthea 1:01:34

Guys, we're building a time machine. Let's go. Um you end up with this weird list of effective altruist uh uh uh concerns um that uh are that have a lot of overlap with the general rationalist community. Um AI safety is number one, um, which again I think is part of why we look at this and we go, I don't know how seriously to take you when you're like AI safety is the number one thing we should be worried about. Although that's because they climate change is on the list, but it is further down the list because they think that it has enough people working on it already.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:12

Are you kidding me? I'm sorry, did I blow the mic out? No, I'm just here to report.

Anthea 1:02:20

They also have a surprising emphasis on animal welfare. Oh, that's nice. It because they're like, listen, animals suffering.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

Aren't the animals already working on that? Huh? Aren't the animals already working on that?

Anthea 1:02:34

What, reducing animal suffering?

SPEAKER_06 1:02:36

Yeah, I hear there was like one farm that was really making a lot of progress.

Anthea 1:02:42

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, Boxer's Farm, right? Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, I like those guys.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:47

How is that horse doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

The highest performing charity in the UK is a donkey sanctuary.

Anthea 1:02:54

Crazy.

Jake 1:02:55

That's that's wild. Wait, highest performing by what metric?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:00

Like, I they get a I I don't know exactly, but they I think they get one one of the biggest donation amounts out of any charity in the UK.

Jake 1:03:07

Okay, so it's definitely money laundering then, is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:11

What do you think the donkeys are doing with the money?

Jake 1:03:14

Are the donkeys in Parliament?

Anthea 1:03:18

Listen, listen, that's a joke that that we can't get into right now.

Jake 1:03:23

Yeah, no, that's fair.

Anthea 1:03:25

Okay, so we come back around to Harry contemplating talking about uh contemplating taking over the wizarding economy for a lark. And we return to the text. Meanwhile, the giant heaps of gold coins within the Potter vault ought to suit his near-term requirements. Harry stumped forward and began picking up gold coins with one hand and dumping them into the other. When he had reached 20, Professor McGonagall coughed. I think that will be more than enough to pay for your school supplies, Mr. Potter. Harry said, his mind elsewhere. Hold on, I'm doing a Fermi calculation. A what? said Professor McGonagall, sounding somewhat alarmed.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Oh my god.

Anthea 1:04:01

It's a mathematical thing named after Enrico Fermi, a way of getting rough numbers quickly in your head. I've got two face palms now. Two people with their head in their hands.

Jake 1:04:13

Yeah, no, I probably would if I had more hands available.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

Finish the thought, finish the bit of text. Yeah, please continue. You know.

Anthea 1:04:23

Well, the thing is, uh, from here, uh Harry uses a Fermi. Harry uses a Fermi equation. Like, a Fermi equation is just uh it's named after one of the Manhattan Project guys, and it is Oh, but who cares, man?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:38

This is what I'm saying. Also, Pepby is one of the most counting his money, he's a little rich kid, and the magic lady gave him a million dollars, and he's like, I'm using math to make it make I'm making so important. I can't do it, man. Oh god.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:57

Yeah, I'm just curious about like why why does he need to count higher than 20 right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:04

He's got 20 gold. I've got 20 gold. I can buy magic now. Jesus Christ.

Anthea 1:05:10

He calculates that the money in his vault probably roughs out to, quote, 40,000 galleons or two billion pounds sterling. Ask the goblin right there. Why do you have to do that? Good point! I bet Griphook knows how much money you have, dog.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:29

He knows these goblins have one interest. Well, they have two because magical swords is in the mix. That's right. That's great. They love they love metallurgy and counting. Yes, yeah.

Jake 1:05:40

And Fermi equations. Not super intentional. Usually they have like one of the coefficients is just vibes.

Anthea 1:05:46

All of the coefficients of Fermi equations are vibes. It's vibes times vibes. Totally. It's a useful skill that we were talking, I'm not gonna go into it because we spent so much time on effective altruism. We were talking about using a Fermi, like basically, we used a Fermi. Calculation to figure out how much pursuit was spending. Like to roughly guess what this megachurch was spending on, like what their line budget line item for food in a year probably was by being like, okay, well, a pizza they get this many pagliacci pizzas a week. A Pagliacchi pizza costs about this.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:23

They do this many, you know, they do catered meals for 75 people once a week, etc.

Anthea 1:06:30

Yeah, so we we took all of the, you know, we roughed out some numbers and we came up with a huge amount of money for $90,000 a year in Seattle alone.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:38

And by the way, Ernie, the short version here is I infiltrated this church that is a Christian nationalist church in Seattle, and I spent six months there.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:46

That's the short version?

SPEAKER_06 1:06:49

Yeah. Yes.

Jake 1:06:50

That's how would you make that shorter? Would it be church sneak, church pad?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:56

Thank you. Thank you, Jake. That's what I was looking for.

Anthea 1:07:01

So fairly equations are like a useful thing, but you're right. It is it is weird to be like, we're very, very rational. Also, here is vibes times vibes.

Jake 1:07:10

One of the least rational equations, frankly.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:13

But if I were standing next to Fred Young, who's the head pastor at the Seattle campus, and like I knew that he would answer me truthfully, I wouldn't do a Fermi equation. It would just be like, how much do you guys spend on food? In Seattle, how much do you guys spend on food a year?

Anthea 1:07:28

Right, right. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. 40,000 galleons or two million pounds sterling. Not bad. Harry smiled with a certain grim satisfaction. It was too bad that he was right in the middle of discovering the amazing new world of magic and couldn't take time out to explore the amazing new world of being rich, which a quick Fermi estimate said was roughly a billion times less interesting. Still, that's the last time I ever mow a lawn for one lousy pound. Harry wheeled from the giant heap of money. Pardon me for asking Professor McGonagall, but I understand that my parents were in their twenties when they died. Is this a usual amount of money for a young couple to have in their vault in the wizarding world? If it was, a cup of tea probably cost five thousand pounds. Rule one of economics. You can't eat money. Professor McGonagall shook her head. Your father was the last heir of an old family, Mr. Potter. It's also possible the witch hesitated. Some of this money may be for bounties placed on you know who, payable to his kill uh to whoever might defeat him.

Jake 1:08:30

Sorry, she doesn't want to say kill after talking about flaying people last chapter.

Anthea 1:08:34

Children, flaying children. It's a surprise tool that will help us later. I'm glad you caught that, though. I'm glad you caught that. That's an Easter egg! Yes. Yeah, you caught it. You caught it. Good job, I think. Can't believe Jake got the Easter egg.

Jake 1:08:51

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:55

Good boys.

Jake 1:08:57

I hate it when I have a thought, and then like an author I don't like says the thought I just had, and I'm like, no.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:03

That's most of my exposure to rationalism so far. Is I'm like, have they thought about this? And it's like, yeah, they have. They have. Um, but not the same way I did. No. So no.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:11

Wow, you guys are troped.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:14

Absolutely. No, it's a skill issue.

Jake 1:09:16

Yeah, I'm built different, actually. It it turns out it wasn't a trope when I did it.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:19

Correct. I'm maybe not built different.

Jake 1:09:22

That sounds different.

Anthea 1:09:25

Or those bounties might not have been collected yet. I'm not sure. Interesting, Harry said slowly. So some of this really is, in a sense, mine, that is, earned by me. Sort of. Possibly. Even if I don't remember the occasion. Harry's fingers tapped against his trouser leg. That makes me feel less guilty about spending a very tiny fraction of it. Don't panic, Professor McGonagall. Mr. Potter, you are a minor, and as such, you will only be allowed to make reasonable withdrawals from I am all about reasonable. I am totally on board with fiscal prudence and impulse control. But I did see some things on the way here which would constitute sensible grown-up purchases. What follows is Harry wheedling McGonagall into letting him get a trunk that's bigger on the inside than the outside through the logic that when I'm an adult, I don't want one. Logically it would make just as much sense to buy it now instead of later and get the use of it right away. He wants to fill it with books. You should have told me much earlier that sort of magic item existed, and that I could afford one. Now my father and I are going to have to spend the next two days frantically hitting up all the secondhand bookshops for old textbooks so I can have a decent science library with me at Hogwarts, and maybe a small science fiction collection if I can assemble something decent out of the bargain bins. Or better yet, I'll make the deal a little sweeter for you, okay? Just let me buy Mr. Potter. You think you can bribe me? What? No, not like that. I'm saying Hogwarts can keep some of the books I bring, if you think that any of them would make good additions to the library. I'm going to be getting them cheap, and I just want to have them around somewhere or other. It's okay to bribe people with books, right? That's a family tradition. Yes, exactly.

Jake 1:11:09

Prestigious English universities love beat up Arthur C. Clark novels.

Anthea 1:11:16

To be fair, Hogwarts probably doesn't have any of those. Exactly.

Jake 1:11:21

On purpose. It's like a lot of places don't have old sci-fi books. It's not because they're like, shit, we can't find any.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:29

This is one of those moments where actually I do find the way the Harry Potter's written to be charming and believably kid-ish because the idea of like a little super nerd who's like, wait, I got something that's really gonna excite you about this.

Anthea 1:11:41

I'm gonna get you the best Isaac Asimov I can find. In in the tent bin outside.

Jake 1:11:47

This is consistent with the tedious child, absolutely. This is in character for him.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:52

Yes, and I have more patience for tedious children than the average bear, just because I think that they're so anthropologically fascinating. Yes.

Jake 1:12:00

I think I have no patience because I was a very tedious child. Right, yeah, yeah. And we can't even think of myself doing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:06

I also I also gotta say, if we're if we're stepping into, you know, we've been talking about the financial uh realities of this world here. Like, if McGonagle was thinking straight at all, she'd be like, this guy is gonna give a huge uh donation as an alumnus to the school. We've gotta catch him setting up a new wing. You can have the big trunk kit, you can buy the broom, you can get the first class cabin up on the Hogwarts Express. We're gonna make sure that you are donating every year. You can have a whole science fiction wing in the library. We'll name it after you.

Jake 1:12:43

Yeah, it'd probably be pretty easy to just put forward a ra an argument that's like, no, it's totally rational to give all your money to Hogwarts.

Anthea 1:12:50

Yeah, yeah. Professor McGonagall can't be bribed, but can Harry.

Jake 1:12:53

Like, think how magical we are. If we had your resources, our magic would multiply those resources into I think Fermi said that.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:02

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All I know is that the Gringotts coins can't be duplicated or whatever. There's like some magic on them, I think.

Anthea 1:13:09

That is that is correct. Yeah. Yes. Um, yes. Professor McGonagall's body seemed to slump, the shoulders lowering within her black robes. I cannot deny the sense of your words, though I much wish I could. I will allow you to withdraw an additional hundred gallons, Mr. Potter. She sighed again. I know that I shall regret this, and I am doing it anyway. It was really nice to have Professor McGonagall here for like a minute, and I hope that she comes back, because she left the building in that line.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:37

I also d I didn't like that she leaned against the wall. I don't think she leaned.

Anthea 1:13:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:42

Sorry.

Anthea 1:13:43

Leaning is a very American thing, apparently. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:46

Oh yeah. Um in dance class we weren't even allowed to lean against the bar. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Show shows disrespect. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

Yeah. No, no professor would be leaning against something in front of a child.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:00

And if a professor did at Hogwarts, it would be in this order. First it would be Hagrid, then I think maybe Flitwick. Uh probably Trelawney, right before she got alone.

Anthea 1:14:12

Yeah, she's not, she's she's drunk.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:15

Actually, let me let me reel back actually. Having just been to so the context is I just went to law school here. Uh yeah. And and I went to uh City University, which is a very old fancy law school here. And the way that um uh professors behave is entirely dependent on like the class of the professor. You know, it is a traditionally a very stuffy high-class institution. And my public law professor, I would have meetings with him where he was leaning all the way back in the chair and his feet were up on the desk, and he was like perfectly relaxed. But uh other professors I had who were like normal human beings and weren't um stratospherically posh were just like I don't know, normal. They were normal and they would talk to me like I was normal and they wouldn't put their feet in front of me or whatever.

Anthea 1:15:15

That's so so so the higher, like the the like more posh professor was the one who was like, I can be very casual with you because I I am so high status.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:29

Yeah.

Anthea 1:15:30

Interesting. Totally, that makes sense. Sure. The richer you are when you say it.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:33

Yeah, the richer you are, the more yoga pants you wear to the Bellevue Mall.

Jake 1:15:37

I I think it might be a professor-specific thing too, because I I recently learned at my job that professors are the least likely to just fill out a spreadsheet when you give it to them. Having dealt with a lot of authors recently, and a lot of it was just like sending a template being like, hey, fill this out and give it back to us. Professors, by far largest margin, would just make some other random Excel document and give us 20% of the information in the wrong format. Being like, Yeah, I'm a professor, this is how I would do it, so here you go. This must be what you need.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:09

I love that.

Anthea 1:16:11

But I maintain that McGonagall specifically, not a leaner. I I agree, I agree. That's a very outright moment. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:18

Moving on.

Anthea 1:16:19

Um, he also I'm gonna I'm gonna skip over a little bit of this. Uh he also talks McGonagall into letting him buy a moach skin pouch, which is a which is also something that's bigger on the inside than the outside. It's just it's a it's a little pouch, it can't hold as much as a trunk, but it still is like um That's also another fucking reference. That's Mosquine. I mean, yes, to be fair, this is also a rolling thing, though. Oh, okay. Uh well then fuck her. Yeah, she she came up with this one.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

Boo! I I just want to say, though, before we move on, I I sense that this is going to be a trope of the book where the precocious genius boy uses logic and reason to convince the adults around him into you know getting what he wants.

Anthea 1:17:04

It absolutely is. It absolutely is. And it like it's not, I don't find his argument is like, you should let me have this because then I can have books that I'm reading on my person at all times, and therefore this is really about encouraging children's reading, and you should let me have this expensive magical item.

Jake 1:17:25

And I don't think that that would be convincing with a non-magic bag.

Anthea 1:17:33

You can yes, you can just I did that my whole fucking childhood, man, with just a normal bag. I still I have even though I don't read paper books very much anymore, I have like a a uh, you know, pathological need to have a paper book with me if I am going to be like on a train or something, just in case. Because that's how I was raised. Like definitely right?

SPEAKER_06 1:17:58

Yes. The one that my parents would do um would be like, why don't you try this other why don't you try this basic version of what you want and and then if you somehow and then if you need something different, then we'll upgrade you. That's like for stuff like the notebook, you know.

Jake 1:18:12

How about you try bag before we do magic bags?

SPEAKER_05 1:18:15

Yes, exactly.

Anthea 1:18:16

Try book before magic books. The example I have in here is because to show what kind of nerd I what kind of tedious child I was, was that I in middle school really wanted a palm pilot because my dad had a palm pilot and I thought it was so cool. And my parents said, you can have a palm pilot if you can carry around like a paper planner and use it for like, I don't remember if it was six months or a year or what, but I was like, fuck yeah, and I did. And then I got to have a palm pilot on a little holster on my belt as a 13-year-old who was very cool and had a lot of friends. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:57

I think it was pretty cool. I thought it was pretty sick, I'll be honest.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:01

Oh my god, I'm so excited. I knocked a flag off of the wall, sorry. But here's the thing.

Anthea 1:19:07

That, yes, so a parent would probably be like, okay, I will give you like, yes, try basic, try basic thing before we do expensive thing. And this brings me to the question of why aren't his parents involved in any of these financial decisions? Why is McGonagall acting in Loco Parentis here?

Jake 1:19:25

Because they're not they're not magic.

Anthea 1:19:27

I get that's genuinely the only thing I can think of. They actually might not have citizens.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:31

They aren't his parents, though, right? His parents were killed.

Anthea 1:19:33

His parents were killed, but like it's Guardians. When when Vernon Dursley and Petunia Dursley are not involved in any of any decisions with Harry, it makes sense because they're abusive and they hate him. And he hates them, and he needs someone to be acting in loco parentis for them, right? Totally, totally fair. He's got a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:54

If we're gonna get legalistic here, that's the money is held in trust for Harry in this bank account. Yes. And the trustees, I guess, who is mechanical, has some power to distribute the money to him for his school supplies. I guess I guess if the trustee just shows up. His guardians have no say. They don't get to say shit.

Anthea 1:20:14

I guess. I guess. I and that's cra that feels like a that feels crazy to me. That feels like something that Yudkowski should have been like, wait a minute, this is weird. Absolutely. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:25

It made perfect sense to me. I was on board.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:27

Okay, so so he's he's very, very concerned with arbitrage and the conversion of things between things and the buying power of things, but he has no interest in the implications of who is safeguarding or stewarding the resources. No. Fascinating.

Anthea 1:20:42

No. I don't think there's anything to be read into that. Okay, yeah, as you were, moving on. Alright, anyway. Uh, we're almost to the end of this chapter. Uh, so he convinces I also I will say, to be fair, this is not the last time in this fanfic or in the original books that a that an adult will entrust Harry with an extremely powerful magical item with no questions asked. Like, at least she asks some questions before we get to like, ah, you can have it, that's fine. Heck yeah. You're 11.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:20

Yeah, well, what do you do that in regular Harry Potter?

Anthea 1:21:23

Say again?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:24

They do that in regular Harry Potter. Exactly.

Anthea 1:21:27

Yeah, exactly. Uh, so he talks her into letting him take enough money to buy the moak skin pouch, um, and then says, and a little spending money, like you mentioned earlier. I think I can remember seeing one or two other things I might want to store in that pouch. Don't push it, Mr. Potter. But, oh, Professor McGonagall, why rain on my parade? Surely this is a happy day when I discover all things wizarding for the first time. Why act the part of the grumpy grown-up when instead you could smile and remember your own innocent childhood, watching the look of delight upon my young face as I buy a few toys, using an insignificant fraction of the wealth that I earned by defeating the most terrible wizard Britain has ever known. Not that I'm accusing you of being ungrateful or anything, but still, what are a few toys compared to that?

Jake 1:22:15

Sorry, did he pull a you should try smiling? Like, this this child is changing my mind about corporal punishment. Like, I literally had the thought of she should smack this kid.

Anthea 1:22:32

You growled Professor McGonagall. There was a look on her face so fearsome and terrible that Harry squeaked and stepped back, knocking over a pile of gold coins with a great jingling noise and sprawling backwards into a heap of money. Griphook sighed and put a palm over his face. I would be doing a great service to Wizarding Britain, Mr. Potter, if I locked you in this vault and left you here. And they left, without any more trouble. End of chapter four. And I think that's a good place to take a break.

unknown 1:23:01

Yay, right.

Jake 1:23:02

Excited for it to get good. I'm gonna reach

Chapter 5 close reading

Jake 1:23:04

all my wine.

Anthea 1:23:11

Welcome back! Chapter 5. The Fundamental Attribution Error. JK Rowling is staring at you. Can you feel her eyes on you? She's reading your mind using her rolling rays. Who cares? Epigraph. It would have require a supernatural intervention for him to have your morality given his environment. The Mocha shop was a quaint little shop, some might even say cute, ensconced behind a vegetable stall that was behind a magical glove shop that was on an alleyway off a side street of Diagon Alley. Disappointingly, the shopkeeper was not a wisened ancient crone, just a nervous-looking young woman wearing faded yellow robes. Right now, she was holding out a Mocha Super Pouch QX31, whose selling point was that it had a widening lip, as well as an undetectable extension charm. You could actually fit big things in it, though the total volume was still limited.

Jake 1:24:04

Yeah, I know. I don't care for that phrase.

Anthea 1:24:08

Harry had insisted on coming here straight away, first thing. Insisted as hard as he thought he could without making Professor McGonagall suspicious. Harry had something he needed to put into the pouch as soon as possible. It wasn't the bag of galleons that Professor McGonagall had allowed him to withdraw from Gringetz. It was all the other galleons that Harry had surreptitiously shoved into his pocket after falling into a heap of gold coins.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:31

That greedy little slut.

Anthea 1:24:34

That had been a real accident, but Harry was never one to discard an opportunity, though it really been more of a spur of the moment thing. Ever since Harry Ever since, Harry had been awkwardly carrying the allowed bag of galleons next to his trouser pocket, so that any jingling would seem to come from the right place. But this is still left to the question of how he was actually going to get the other coins into the pouch without getting caught. The golden coins might have been his, but they were still stolen. Self-stolen? Auto thieved? What follows is a sequence that is short and yet tedious, both in and out of universe, where Harry pretends to be putting the his gold into the pouch and then taking it out again while leaving the stolen galleons behind. The level of detail is such that I think Yadkowski put a lot of thought into this and really wanted to make sure that everybody knew how much thought he had put into it.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:22

Picturing Yadkowski just like walking around his own home, just putting money into the game.

Jake 1:25:29

Did he just reverse engineer the cabbage wolf feet or cabbage wolf sheep?

SPEAKER_04 1:25:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:36

I I just love it because you know that he was thinking, like, wow, everybody's gonna see that this is uh a really deft bit of sleight of hand, and I'm so smart for thinking of this. And a lot of his readers probably were like, wow, and objectively, anybody who was around him at the time was like, what the fuck is that kid doing with his pocketbooks? Absolutely, absolutely.

Jake 1:25:58

He also might have been projecting and thinking, well, if I'm not clear exactly how this happened, some pedantic asshole's gonna comment about this.

Anthea 1:26:04

Also that, also that.

Jake 1:26:05

Although maybe it's not projecting if he is writing for rationalists.

Anthea 1:26:08

Right, yeah, that is the problem, right? Professor McGonagall looked back at him once, but Harry managed to avoid freezing or flinching, and she didn't seem to notice anything. Though you never did quite know what the adults that had a sense of humor. It took three iterations to get the job done, and Harry guessed he'd managed to steal maybe thirty galleons from himself. So he buys the buys the pouch, uh and uh and they he's he's stolen this this gold, uh he's putting it into the pouch, um they're leaving the shop, and then, unfortunately. Are you really Harry Potter? Whispered the old man, one huge tear sliding down his cheek. You wouldn't lie about that, would you? Only I'd heard rumors that you didn't really survive the killing curse, and that's why no one ever heard from you again. It seemed that Professor McGonagall's disguise spell was less than perfectly effective against more experienced exp magical practitioners. Professor McGonagall had laid a hand on Harry's shoulder and yanked him into the nearest alleyway. The moment she'd heard Harry Potter, the old man had followed, but at least it looked like no one else had heard. This is the beginning of where we where, like, oh, now what people see is a teacher and an old man yank a child into an hour.

Jake 1:27:18

Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say, that old man just saw a child get kidnapped and then was like a little interested, but then was like, okay, whatever. Also potentially saw Harry Potter get kidnapped. Well, yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:31

That's why nobody ever saw him again.

Anthea 1:27:32

He got kidnapped. Harry considered the question. Was he really Harry Potter? I only know what other people have told me, Harry said. It's not like I remember being born. His hand brushed his forehead. I've had this scar as long as I remember, and I've been told my name was Harry Potter as long as I remember. But, Harry said thoughtfully, if there's already sufficient cause to postulate a conspiracy, there's no reason why they wouldn't just find another orphan and raise him. To believe that he was Harry Potter.

Jake 1:28:02

She should smack this kid.

Anthea 1:28:03

Professor McGonagall drew her hand over her face in exasperation. You look just about exactly like your father, James, the year he first attended Hogwarts, and I can attest on the basis of personality alone that you are related to the scourge of Gryffindor. She could be in on it too, Harry observed. No, quavered the old man. She's right. You have your mother's eyes.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:26

I knew someone was gonna say that.

Anthea 1:28:28

There's no indication of who this old man is. Yeah. He knows James and Lily enough to be like, you've got Lily Potter's eyes.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:38

I thought that in the original book that was something that like Sirius said or Lupin or something like that.

Jake 1:28:44

Like you have your mother's eyes because I do too in one of my bags.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:49

There's a secret extension charm.

Anthea 1:28:53

Hmm, Harry frowned. I suppose you could be in on it too. Enough, Mr. Potter. The old man raised up a hand as if to touch Harry, but then let it fall. Thank God!

SPEAKER_06 1:29:06

I want to say also, I forgot to say this last chapter, is that this represents a huge and weird tonal shift from the last time we were both in an alley, I was weeping because of how my parents had been murdered and also flencing children.

Anthea 1:29:19

It's gonna get weirder while they're in this alleyway.

Jake 1:29:22

Great. Can't wait for it to get good.

Anthea 1:29:25

Right, yes, this is chapter five. This is where it gets good.

Jake 1:29:28

This is where it gets good.

Anthea 1:29:30

I'm just glad that you're alive, the old man murmured. Thank you, Harry Potter. Thank you for what you did. I'll leave you alone now.

Jake 1:29:37

He does this to every kid that comes through the shop, just in case.

Anthea 1:29:41

And his cane slowly.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:43

I I I know I know we keep interrupting on this, but I just as a fan fiction editor, no. He's like using all of the dialogue words, like murmured, growled, shouted, squealed. It's really tedious, and I'm really starting to notice it. Just use said. It's okay.

Anthea 1:30:06

Said is perfectly fine. It's not supposed to draw attention to itself. That's why it's there.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:10

If it's clear who's talking, you don't even have to put said.

Anthea 1:30:12

My editing note here is uh that much like in the in the chapter where like out of nowhere Harry was like, who was that man in the corner that hasn't been established at all in this? Like, we just have the old man said. Like, there's no introduction of this. And I I it bothers the fuck out of me. Like, it's just like this guy just appears out of nowhere. Even though clearly that's not what Yudkowski is trying to convey in this, like, in the blocking of this scene, like, because then a minute later he's like, This is what happened. I'm like, why did you do it like that? I don't I it it's bothersome. Uh the guy leaves. Finally, Professor McGonagall seemed to relax. That was not well done, she said in a low voice. I know you're not used to this, Mr. Potter, but people do care about you. Please be kind to them. Harry looked down at his shoes. They shouldn't, he said, with a tinge of bitterness. Care about me, I mean. You saved them from you know who, said Professor McGonagall. How should they not care? Harry looked up at the witch lady's strict expression between her pointed hat and sighed. I suppose there's no chance that if I said fundamental attribution error, you'd have any idea what that meant.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:27

You dumb bitch. Oh my god. Oh my god, here we go. Smackin', McGonagall, smackin'! Like Physically painful, dude. Okay.

Anthea 1:31:37

No, said the professor in her precise Scottish accent.

Jake 1:31:40

Also, the answer to that question is yes, please continue.

Anthea 1:31:44

But please explain, Mr. Potter, if you would be so kind.

Jake 1:31:48

Okay, she's literally asking for it, I guess. She is asking for it. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:53

Yes, I'm the other half of a Socratic dialogue, Mr. Potter.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:56

I just I wanna I just wanna like put my head in the door and shut the door. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:01

Put my head in the oven and shut the door.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:03

This is so tedious.

Anthea 1:32:06

Well, Harry said, trying to figure out how to describe that particular bit of muggle science. Suppose you come into work and see your colleague kicking his desk. You think, what an angry person he must be. Your colleague is thinking about how someone bumped him into a wall on the way to work and then shouted at him. Anyone would be angry at that, he thinks. When we look at others, we see personality traits that explain their behavior, but when we look at ourselves we see circumstances that explain our behavior. People's stories make internal sense to them from the inside, but we don't see people's histories trailing behind them in the air. We only see them in one situation, and we don't see what they would be like in a different situation. So the fundamental attribution error is that we explain by permanent enduring traits what would be better explained by circumstance and context. There were some elegant experiments which confirmed this, but Harry wasn't about to go into them. Yeah. So I I the I do want to share the chart on the Wikipedia page for the fundamental attribution error. Please. If negative outcome, then reason for my action, the situation. If negative outcome, then reason for others' action, personal character. So yeah, like he's Harry's explaining this fine. Like we like when there's a positive outcome because of something we did, we're like, that's because I'm great. If there's a negative outcome for something because of something we did, we say, well, the circumstances were such that we have.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:50

No, no, that's not an error. That's true for me, though. You don't understand.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:55

Exactly, exactly. Um a very special and mathematically correct boy. A very yes.

Jake 1:34:01

We need a third access for if built different.

Anthea 1:34:03

If built different, yeah. So there's again, like like he says, there are some there are some experiments uh from the 60s that that this is based on. Um later studies have criticized the conclusions of these uh initial experiments.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:19

I bet.

Anthea 1:34:20

In a fun paper from 2015, which is past the point this chapter of HP Moore was published, titled The Fundamental Attribution Error Isrational in an uncertain world, Drew W. Walker, Kevin A. Smith, and Edward Wool point out that quote, uh they I'm not gonna quote it because it would reference something I'm I'm skipping. Um they they say basically, like if if you are if you see an outcome, the uh the that outcome does tell you something about the person that caused that outcome, even if they didn't have a complete choice in the matter. Um the Oh, it's such an interesting experiment though. Can I tell you guys about it? Yes. Okay. So in the initial experiment, what they did, because it was the 60s.

Jake 1:35:13

Some acid first.

Anthea 1:35:14

Probably. The subjects were instructed to Okay, so uh they were here we go. Here's my notes. Sorry, blah blah blah. Skipping through here. Because it was the 60s, subjects were asked to read essays that were either pro or anti-Fidel Castro.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:32

Yeah.

Anthea 1:35:33

And then rate whether they thought the authors of the essays were pro or anti-Fidel Castro.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:39

Naturally So, like a reading comprehension test.

Anthea 1:35:42

Right, yeah. So naturally, on the first go-round, everybody was like, Well, this person who wrote a pro-Fidel Castro essay seems like he's got positive attitudes towards Castro. Then they were informed that the authors had been randomly assigned whether they were going to write pro or anti-essays. So the content of the essay actually had nothing to do, they were, they were, they were told write a persuasive essay, pro or anti-Castro. It had nothing to do with their actual like core attitudes, that this was an assignment. And even then, the subjects who were being quizzed said, I still think tended to say, I think that the pro-Castro essay author has positive feelings towards Castro.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:32

And that's- I think that's the dumbest fucking experiment I've ever heard in my life. They're all in academia. Every single one of these fucking people writing essays is like, obviously, I love Castro and want to destroy capitalism. Obviously, it's the academy. Like, oh my god.

Jake 1:36:51

That's proves whether or not the essays were persuasive.

Anthea 1:36:56

More or less. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and that's and that's what um Walker Smith and Vool are basically. I mean, well, partly what they're saying is like the I I think kind of to your joke point, but to your point, Ernie, they're like, well, it's reasonable for a person to think that this person who wrote a persuasive pro-Castro essay at least doesn't have enough negative feelings towards Castro to make it impossible for them to write a persuasive essay. So they probably have some positive feelings towards Castro.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:33

That's so- It's so different than saying that person tripped on a route, they probably did it themselves through the law of attraction. There are people who think stuff like that. Or like, we do have a tendency to like, you know, if bad things keep happening to someone, we think it's their fault. Like, definitely. Yeah. But like, this one is so specific in terms of like the ser it's not just like the content of this essay, it's like the series of actions implied by an essay. Yes.

Anthea 1:37:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:58

So, like, god damn it, I can't believe it took over 50 years for someone for someone to be like over 60 years for someone to be like, that was a whack way to test that. Are you sure about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:08

Um, they just I mean, there have been like a couple of books written about the uh the Milgram experiments where they, you know, they they pretended to shock people, where like people looked at what the experiments actually said later and they're like, ah, oh wait a minute, this is completely backwards.

Anthea 1:38:23

I mean, the Milgram experiment has been has been like has has a lot of good data behind it, but perhaps not as much as it initially seemed, right? Like, it's not, it's not like um it's not like the Stanford Prison experiment where we looked at it and we went, fuck that. That doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:42

No, no, no, no, no. No, the thing that I just read about the Milgram experiments is that the data itself was bad. The data was faked in places. It was not good.

Anthea 1:38:51

All right, well then, I sit corrected.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:54

Like the the data was bad and the conclusions that they drew were nonsense. That was that was what I read most recently.

Anthea 1:39:01

Interesting. I'm really excited to have that up. Send me that link. Okay. So, like, Walkersmith and Vool are saying, like, we can it's not irrational to think that disposition, like personal disposition, is contributing to whatever someone is doing, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:39:18

Um we're just people who live in the world. That's how the world works.

Anthea 1:39:23

Right, yeah. And like Harry's example of someone kicking a desk because they had a shitty commute, like, and someone observing that and being like, that guy seems like an angry person, I think is like is not an irrational thing to think because other people might have a shitty commute and go cry in the bathroom before getting to work.

Jake 1:39:42

There's a certain threshold of kind of person who will kick a desk, period.

Anthea 1:39:46

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So so like the fundamental I I think that it's a useful cognitive distortion to keep in mind, the fundamental attribution error. Because yeah, like we do we you can you can over-index on it, right? You can you can give it more credit than you can you can look at someone and s and say their personal character is explaining this more than maybe is warranted.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:12

What does this have to do with little boy Harry Potter and the old man? I'm sorry, I don't see the connection.

Anthea 1:40:19

He is going to explain it before I get to that. I swear to God I'm gonna get to it, but I have to read you something that made me laugh out loud while I was from Eliezer Yudkowski. Outside the text. In a 2009 post on Less Wrong, user Carl Schulman wrote, quote, don't revere the bearer of good info. Quote. Specifically, Eliezer's writing at overcoming bias has provided nice introductions to many standard concepts and arguments from philosophy, economics, and psychology. These are great concepts, and many commenters report that they have been greatly influenced by their introductions to them at overcoming bias uh overcoming bias, but the psychological default will be to overrate the messenger, Yudkowski. This danger is particularly great in light of Yudkowski's writing style, and when the fact that a point is already extant in the literature and is either being relayed or reinvented isn't noted. To address a few cases of the latter, Gary Dresher covered much of the content of Eliaser's overcoming bias posts, mostly very well, from Timeless Physics to Newcomb's problems to quantum mechanics in a book back in May 2006. While Eliaser's irrealist meta-ethics would be very familiar to modern philosophers like Don Loeb or Josh Green, and isn't so far from the 18th-century philosopher David Hume. In other words, Schumann is saying what we've been saying, Yudkowski's insights are largely not that original, they're just being relayed in a persuasive way, without a lot of citation. And because of the form of the message, readers are prone to fall prey to a form of the fundamental attribution error that credits the messenger with higher inherent competence or knowledge than is warranted.

Jake 1:41:59

Yeah, it's a lot of words to say don't blow the messenger.

Anthea 1:42:01

I bet Yodkowski handles this in a super chill and rational way. The top comment on this post is from Eliezer Yodkowski.

Jake 1:42:08

Weird.

Anthea 1:42:09

Quote, I was actually quite amazed to find how far Gary Dresher had gotten when someone referred me to him as a similar writer. I actually went so far as to finish my free will stuff before reading his book. I'm actually still reading, because after reading the introduction, I decided that it was important for the two of us to write independently and then combine independent components. Still ended up with quite a lot of overlap. But I think it is probably unfair to judge Dresher as being at all representative of what ordinary philosophers can do. Dresher is an AI guy, and the comments on the back of his book seem to indicate that he was writing in a mode that philosophical readers found startling and new. Dresher is not alternative mainstream philosophy. Dresher is alternative Yudkowski. I've referred to Dresher in SCP a few times. The main reason I don't refer more to conventional philosophy is that it doesn't seem very good as a field from distinguishing good ideas from bad ones. If you can't filter your good ideas and present them in a non-needlessly complicated fashion, is there much point in pointing a reader to it?

SPEAKER_06 1:43:14

I'm gonna walk into the sea. I have to get up! I'm gonna buy, I'm gonna get uh out of this chair, I'm gonna uh leave our house, I'm gonna walk into the ocean.

Jake 1:43:25

This is a reference for literally no one, but there is a game called Yeek that was notoriously verbose and actually pretty similar to this. Um and in an interview, the author cited references that they drew from, and one, I can't remember which, but they said they appreciated it, and it was inspiring because of how concise the language was. It gives energy of this of like, you're you took you're not doing what you think you're doing.

Anthea 1:43:52

You are not doing what you think you're doing, my guy. Okay, let's get back to Harry. The witch's eyebrows drew up underneath her hat brim. I think I understand, Professor McGonagall said slowly. But what does that have to do with you? Harry kicked the brick wall of the alley hard enough to make his foot hurt.

Jake 1:44:10

Must have gotten pushed, though. We had a really bad commute.

Anthea 1:44:14

People think that I saved them from new you know who because I'm some kind of great warrior of the light. To paraphrase Dan Friesen, funny how Harry hates the social rewards of being the person who saved wizards from new you know who, but is willing to accept thousands of galleons in bounties for being that same person.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:32

Because the social rewards come with obligation. You have to be nice to these weird people. Yep. I thought he was gonna say and also like I don't know that he I mean, I don't know. It feels very weird for him to immediately have cottoned on to the fact that it's like they think I'm some great warrior of light.

Jake 1:44:48

I actually I and again No one is an old guy saying, Are you Harry Potter? No one is I'm a warrior of the light.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:55

No, those are uh those are actually your words, child.

Jake 1:45:00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:01

You came up with that.

Jake 1:45:02

You were that kid, I think you took that from Final Fantasy.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:08

Yeah, legitimately, if he like invoked Final Fantasy or a sci-fi novel at this point, I would have more sympathy for this viewpoint.

Anthea 1:45:15

Yeah, yeah. So he he's basically like, I people uh he says people don't care about me. They aren't even paying attention to me. They want to shake hands with a bad explanation because he's like, they all think that there's something fundamental about me, but I think probably there was something about the circumstance that made it so that I defeated the Dark Lord. Again, he will take the money though.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:39

Wouldn't it be cool if you could be so smart that you could just sort of like skip emotional development and the building of stakes and getting people psychologically invested in you and just jump straight to they don't care about me as a person, they just want to shake hands with a bad idea.

Jake 1:45:56

You're kind of describing gifted programs in school a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:59

Listen, listen. Gifted programs gifted programs do not let you skip character development, only defer it until you leave home. Yeah, no, that's true. I think that's correct.

Jake 1:46:11

Although there was a grade where I skipped sex ed to go to a gifted program instead, which I don't know how they rationalized that.

Anthea 1:46:18

What did you do instead of sex ed?

Jake 1:46:20

Uh internet.

Anthea 1:46:22

Oh, okay.

Jake 1:46:23

Yeah. I figured it out.

Anthea 1:46:24

I th that is also a form of sex ed in many cases. Yeah, exactly. Alright, cool. So McGonagall decides that their next stop should be Madame Malkin's robes on the grounds that Harry's mogul clothing might be part of what's drawing attention to him. Um she uh she puts Harry in a Malkin's care. She goes across the street to get a drink, which she has earned.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:42

Yeah.

Anthea 1:46:42

Hell yeah. Hell yeah, McGonagall. Um, I don't know that I can cut anything from the next few beats. Sorry. Hit me. Next to Harry, a pale young boy with a pointed face and awesome cool blonde white hair, seems to be going through the final stages of a similar process. One of Malkin's two assistants was examining the white-haired boy and the checkerboard gridded robe he was wearing. Occasionally she would tap a corner of the robe with her wand, and the robe would loosen her tighten. Hello, said the boy. Hogwarts too? Harry could predict where this conversation was about to go, and he decided in a split second of frustration that enough was enough. Good heavens, whispered Harry.

unknown 1:47:22

It couldn't be.

Anthea 1:47:23

He let his eyes widen. Your name, sir? Draco Malfoy, said Draco Malfoy, looking slightly puzzled.

Jake 1:47:31

Great sentence.

Anthea 1:47:35

It is you, Draco Malfoy! I I never thought I'd be so honored, sir. Harry wished he could make tears come out of his eyes. The others usually started crying at around this point. Oh, said Draco, sounding a little confused, and his lips stretched in a smug smile. It's good to meet someone who knows his place. One of the assistants, the one who seemed to recognize Harry, made a muffled choking sound. Harry burbled on, I'm delighted to meet you, Mr. Malfoy, just unutterably delighted. And to be attending Hogwarts in your very year, it makes my heart swoon. Oops. That last part might have sounded a little odd, like he was flirting with Draco or something. God forbid Draco and Harry fan this fanfic.

Jake 1:48:18

Even as someone who doesn't know fanfic, even I know this trope. Sorry, not not a trope, doesn't use tropes.

Anthea 1:48:24

He doesn't use tropes. And I am pleased to learn that I shall be treated with the respect due to the family of Malfoy. The other boy lobbed back, accompanied by a smile such as the highest of kings might bestow upon the least of his subjects, if that subject were honest, though poor. Uh damn, Harry was having trouble thinking up his next line. Well, everyone did want to shake the hand of Harry Potter, so when my clothes are fitted, sir, might you deign to shake my hand? I should wish nothing more to put the capper upon this day. Nay, this month, indeed, my whole lifetime The white blonde haired boy glared in return. And what have you done for the malfoys that entitles you to such a favour? Oh, I am so trying, totally trying this routine on the next person who wants to shake my hand. Harry bowed his head. No, no, sir, I understand. I'm sorry for asking. I should be honored to clean your boots rather. Indeed, snapped the other boy. His stern face lightened somewhat. Tell me, what house do you think you might be sorted into? I'm bound for Slytherin House, of course, like my father Lucius before me. And for you, I'd guess House Hufflepuff, or possibly House Elf. Harry grinned sheepishly. Professor McGonagall says that I'm the most Ravenclaw person she's ever seen or heard tell of in legend, so much so that Rowena herself would tell me to get out more, whatever that means, and that I'll undoubtedly end up in Ravenclaw House if the hat isn't screaming too loudly for the rest of us to make out any words. End quote. Wow, said Draco Malfoy, sounding slightly impressed. The boy gave a sort of wistful sigh. Your flattery was great, or I thought so anyway. You'd do well in Slytherin House, too. Usually it's only my father who gets that kind of thing. Sort of that who gets that sort of groveling. I'm hoping the other Slytherins will suck up to me now that I'm at Hogwarts. I'm guess- I guess this is a good sign then. Harry coughed. Actually, sorry, I've got no idea who you are, really. Oh come on! The boy said with fierce disappointment. Why'd you go and do that then? Draco's eyes widened with sudden suspicion. How do you not know about the Malvoys? What are those clothes you're wearing? Are your parents muggles? Two of my parents are dead, Harry said. His heart twinged when he put it that way. My other two parents are muggles, and they're the ones that raised me. What? said Draco. Who are you? Harry Potter. Pleased to meet you. So from here, Draco starts to flatter Harry back. Uh in I hate this.

Jake 1:50:51

I was kind of hoping Harry would just never drop the bit and they would just be good friends.

Anthea 1:50:58

It's yeah, I mean, like, I is there much in there to discuss? Maybe not. Could I cut any of it? No. Because it's so classically how, like, this is this is Harry Potter the manipulative little psychopath.

Jake 1:51:18

Yeah, I think there's actually a lot to unpack. Yeah. We'll go too deep into it, but like, I think it reveals a lot about how Yadkowski thinks about how people interact with each other.

Anthea 1:51:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I think one of the reasons that I found it so striking is that the the the resentment that Harry feels towards everyone who wants to shake his hand, it comes is continuing to carry through into this part of the scene, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:51:44

Yeah, that was a big one. To the extent that like he's like, I'm gonna do this little bit to like get revenge on all of these plebs for like being grateful a mass murderer is dead. Yeah.

Jake 1:51:55

Yeah, two people recognized me and were kind, so now I'm going to start seething with spite at a stranger.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:02

I'm still, frankly, I'm still mad at that bitch whose son died. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:10

One might be a fundamental attribution error is that Harry has got some like real issues going on, you know? He doesn't. He's the only sane one. It's only circumstances. So crazy though.

Anthea 1:52:26

Right, right. He has chosen to be sane in an insane circumstance.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:32

His emotions are spiraling wildly from moment to moment when people ask totally normal things on him.

Anthea 1:52:42

So Draco turns this around on him. Harry Potter? The Harry Potter? Gosh, I've always wanted to meet you. Shut up, Harry suggested.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:54

I don't find this credible at all, though. Like, this kid just wound him up and he's like, oh, it's my hero, Harry Potter. If this if this was credible at all, Draco would be like, well, I don't care about Harry Potter or whatever, you know?

SPEAKER_06 1:53:07

Absolutely. Right, right. Your parents probably died to get away from you. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he's like a little shit. Like, yeah. And so, like, it's actually really weird, also, that like, no, what you're what you're zeroing in on here is like, as soon as he drops the ruse, Draco is very also weirdly rationalist slash utilitarian about like and and weirdly has a lot of clarity about, oh, yeah, I liked that you were I liked that you were sucking up to me, and I hope other people do it for the gratification it gives me, and seems to have some some ability to separate the flattery from whether or not he deserves it. Whereas a core part of his whole little identity is that he's an entitled snot, who like, as a young person who's insecure, really buys into this idea of inherently s inherent superiority.

Anthea 1:53:57

Right, right. Now, perhaps because we are inhabiting this fic from the perspective of a child that also believes that he has a level of inherent superiority. Um, that is a ration the the idea is that that is a rational way to view the world. If you are inherently superior, there is no reason not to own it.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:19

But Draco Malvoy isn't inherently superior.

Anthea 1:54:22

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:23

Except that he seems to be being given. I'm so uneasy about the positive characterization he's being given compared to Harry, and I'm worried that they're gonna become friends without Oh, they're 100% gonna be friends.

Anthea 1:54:35

I'm so okay. Yeah, yeah. I regret to inform you that Draco is going to be a major player in the rest of this book.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:42

Great. Um, please.

Anthea 1:54:47

He's he starts coming. He starts like laying on this flattery, right? But you're Harry Potter, the glorious savior of the wizarding world, everyone's hero, Harry Potter. I've always wanted to be just like you when I grow up, so I can Draco cut off the words in mid-sentence, his face freezing in absolute horror. Tall, white haired, coldly elegant in black robes of the finest quality, one hand gripping a silver handled cane which took on the character of a deadly weapon just by being in that hand. His eyes regarded the room with the dispassionate quality of an executioner, a man to whom killing was not painful or even deliciously forbidden, but just a routine activity like breathing. That was the man who had just at that moment strolled in through the open door. Draco, said the man, low and very angry, what are you saying? In one split second of sympathetic panic, Harry formulated a rescue plan. Lucius Malfoy gasped Harry Potter. The Lucius Malfy? Because he only has one tactic right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:55

I don't know, it's kind of funny. I'm on board.

Anthea 1:55:57

Yeah, I that for that one, that's what does work for me. He goes on to start flattering Lucius the way that he was just flattering Draco and the way Draco was just flattering him. The most honored laureate of all the house of Slytherin! I've been thinking about trying to get into Slytherin House myself just because I heard you were in it as a child. What are you saying, Mr Potter? came a near scream from outside the shop, and Professor McGonagall burst in a second later. There was such pure horror on her face that Harry's mouth opened automatically, and then blocked on nothing to say. Professor McGonagall cried Draco, is it really you? I've heard so much about you from my father I've been thinking of trying to get sorted into Gryffindor so I can What? bellowed Lucius Malfoy and Professor McGonagall in perfect unison, standing side by side.

Jake 1:56:49

The comedy rule of sevens.

Anthea 1:56:56

What in the noises off is this nonsense? There was a sudden flurry of action as Lucius seized Draco and dragged him out of the shop. And then there was silence.

Jake 1:57:09

Wow. That's a first, okay?

SPEAKER_06 1:57:11

Um my goodness. Okay, so far be it from me to ask for consistency in these characters from moment to moment. Yes. But Lucius comes in.

Anthea 1:57:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:23

Harry thinks, as an 11-year-old, that man kills on the regular. A normal kid.

Anthea 1:57:29

In a very cool way. I want to note how extraordinarily cool this description of Lucius Malfoy is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That dude is awesome. Yeah. Yep. That's the narrative weight that's being put on Lucius Malfoy, is that that guy, I mean, that guy fucks. Definitely.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:49

Definitely she fucked Draco's mom, I'll tell you that for free. That's horrible. Um, but uh, but uh, okay, so Kane Daddy Lucius um comes in. I will say Draco is terrified of him, but we know from the first chapter where Petunia acts scared of her husband that she loves, that that's not necessarily like supposed to show you that a character is bad. Right. Um, that having been said, Draco is seems to be terrified of him. He is at least horrified to see him coming in in this way. Um he's described as angry. And then Draco decides, wait a minute, I'm gonna ride or die for this bit. Right. And then a moment later says something that he has to know will cause his dad to hit him with the cane. Yeah.

Jake 1:58:37

Yeah, that bit seemed to be explicitly to piss off his dad and nothing else.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:42

Right. I think just show solidarity with Harry. I that's what I read this as is they're both doing this bit together to show that they are so much more rational than the adults around them.

Anthea 1:58:54

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:55

I think that's probably right.

Anthea 1:58:56

Yeah, I kind of read it. I like I could read it as Draco is because Draco has a lot to learn from Harry. Let's be clear. Um, obviously. Obviously. And I think that, you know, I see even fair me? I don't think so. Do you even fare me, bro? I read it kind of as Draco is so caught up in the moment that he's just like, I got one bit! We got one bit that's going. This has been working, this worked for me with this Harry Potter kid. It'll I gotta I gotta apply it to the next powerful person that might give me an advantage that I see.

Jake 1:59:32

Yadkowski figured out one thing that was actually funny and had to drive it into the ground.

Anthea 1:59:37

Also that. Yeah. Um, McGonagall is pretty fucked up about what she just walked in on. She thinks it's fucking crazy. Uh Harry says that they were just joking around, and she says, Draco Malfoy said in front of his father that he wanted to be sorted into Gryffindor. Joking around isn't enough to do that. Professor McGonagall paused, visibly taking breaths. What part of Get Fitted for Robes sounded to you like please cast a confundus charm on the entire universe? He was in a situational context where those actions made internal sense. It did take me several reads to realize that this is the fundamental attribution error. That he's that Yudkowski is like, I'm gonna demonstrate the fundamental attribution error. Alright, good job. Is it? I mean Yeah, because McGonagal is McGonagal is attributing to Draco something about him. She's like, that kid went crazy and said something that will definitely make his father hit him with that cane. And Harry is saying, No, you're miss you're you're attributing to personal character what is explained by circumstance in which it made internally in in which it was internally consistent.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:54

I guess that it's also confusing be to me because she also said effectively that he acts like he's under a confundus charm. Sure.

Anthea 2:01:04

So Which would be a circumstance.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:06

Which would be a circumstance, and so it's a little it's a little confusing. And also, I don't know, saying that someone's acting extremely out of character, which is what she is saying, doesn't really seem like it's saying something about their their character in the same way as some of the other fundamental attribution stuff.

Jake 2:01:20

Also, does she know Draco Malfoy? Does she hang out with him? Like, why would she know anything about him at this point?

Anthea 2:01:26

That's fair. She, I mean, she must know Lucius. Yeah. Sure.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:30

She probably taught Lucius.

Anthea 2:01:32

She probably taught Lucius and Narcissa. Um, Draco's an only child, uh, like Harry. So there's it's not like when Ron shows up and she's like, God damn it, another Weasley.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:44

Yeah. They ship him out every other year.

Anthea 2:01:46

Yeah, yeah. There's just, oh, we only got one. I have to imagine that all of the teachers at Hogwarts, when Ginny starts at Hogwarts, they're like, thank God, this is the last one, I can see the end.

Jake 2:01:57

We really gotta work on that birth control charm. Like, how did we not do that 2,000 years ago?

Anthea 2:02:02

Yeah. No, don't explain. I don't want to know what happened in here, ever. Whatever dark power inhabits you, it is contagious, and I don't want to end up like poor Draco Malfoy, poor Madame Malkin, and her two poor assistants.

Jake 2:02:17

Or that flayed kid. Unrelated, but like sucks.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:23

Remember that flayed kid? That was also really bad, and I hate to keep reminding you guys there were two kids. Two flayed children.

Jake 2:02:31

And a partridge and a pear tree, yeah.

Anthea 2:02:33

Harry sighed. It was clear that Professor McGonagall wasn't in a mood to listen to reasonable explanations. He looked at Madame Malkin, who was still wheezing against the wall, and Malkin's two assistants, who had now both fallen to their knees, and finally down at his own tape measure draped body. I'm not quite done being fitted for clothes, Harry said kindly. Why don't you go back and have another drink? End of chapter five.

Conclusion

Jake 2:03:00

It's really just the fantasy of overawing people so much they fall to their knees before you.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:10

They're super funny.

Anthea 2:03:11

They are all Malkin and her two assistants are are in paroxysms of laughter.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:17

I guess that's what okay. It's it's just his writing is a little unclear. So, like, if he's trying to do this like meta thing where he's like, I'm showing you as a reader what the fundamental attribution error is, and I can't figure out who's doing what at any given time. Like it's not working. Because I'm like fundamentally attributing to Yankowski that he's a bad writer. And what it's actually it's just the circumstance.

Anthea 2:03:43

It's just the circumstance in which he finds himself.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:48

Which is that he's trying to explain a lot of concepts that are frankly out of his range, and he has to use the medium of Harry Potter.

Anthea 2:03:56

He's gotta.

Jake 2:03:57

Yeah. There's no choice.

Anthea 2:03:58

Yeah, yeah. To be fair, he did spend thousands of words writing um thought experiments and so forth on Less Wrong before he ever got to maybe maybe if I do this through Harry Potter, that'll reach more people.

Jake 2:04:12

I mean, if it's the same as this fan figus, he really probably only needed to use about 200 words then for what he wrote.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:18

Undoubtedly. Yeah. Why hasn't he been able to come up with clearer thought experiments? Actually, that's a question I would like to ask the entire rational community.

Anthea 2:04:27

I think you gotta ask the whole rat community why are your thought experiments so complex? I this is totally a side note, but I was reading, I was, or I was listening to a lecture series on on like the history of ethical thought rec uh the other day, because uh there's two philosophy majors in here right now, but I got to the age of of 38 without ever reading Kant and understanding the categorical imperative. Um so I'm catch- I'm playing some catch-up. Uh and so I was reading that, and then I've also been reading um a book on rational choice theory and why it's stupid.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:07

Um rational choice theory.

Anthea 2:05:13

Yeah, yeah. Um it's called Choose Wisely, uh, and I'm I'm a little a little bit into it. Uh and it it I realized suddenly, I was like, all of these social psychologists and philosophers have such a like middle to all of their examples of and like thought experiments are like middle to upper class. Like the the example that they're that these guys are using in this book about like here's why rational choice theory is dumb, is they're talking about the about about a young woman trying to decide what college to go to. And they're like, if you were to if she were to apply rational choice theory, here are all of the things that she would have to do before she ever because rational choice theory is like, well, we're gonna assign numbers to everything, and then you know, we'll get this much utility out of this thing and under these circumstances, blah blah blah blah blah. We're gonna put numbers on everything and then add them all up and just and look at what gets the best score, and that's the rational choice.

Jake 2:06:10

This sounds like worse utilitarianism, yeah. Which is saying a lot.

Anthea 2:06:14

Yeah, yes, yeah, and they're like, well, right, and they're like, but in order to even assign numbers to complex things like what college should I go to, you have to do a bunch of stuff that is not empirical or rational in any way. So rational choice theory doesn't really work, and it is anyway.

Jake 2:06:32

This honestly seems like a good time to use a Fermi equation.

Anthea 2:06:35

Yeah, right, yes, yeah, yeah. Well, and I their their argument is kind of like you are, these are just vibes. Like, everyone says that rational choice theory is rational, but it is really just vibes. Um, but this example, like all of the examples that they're using are like this girl deciding where to go to college, or like a family deciding whether to go to the beach or the museum on a Saturday, or um, you know, stuff like that. And I was like, all of these, this is not just a rationalist problem. This is an economist, philosopher, social scientist, social like academic problem of none of you have worked a real job.

Jake 2:07:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:07:18

It's interesting too, because when I was thinking, you know, thinking about the fundamental attribution problem, the very first thing that popped into my mind as something that people would would use, you know, this error to explain would be why are you unhoused? People tend to think it's a character issue, or they think it's uh it they think it's substance use disorder, which is then sort of you know relayed as a character issue. When really, according to homelessness is a housing problem, this analysis of a lot of different cities across the United States, the enduring factors that contribute to homelessness are income inequality and housing availability.

Anthea 2:07:54

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, that's I that is a great example of the fundamental attribution error on a large scale.

SPEAKER_06 2:08:02

Or why do women get abortions? Or, you know, why do people get abortions? Because they're sluts who didn't want to commit, and the answer is like their parents for whom birth control is not particularly effective, and so it tends to keep being ineffective.

Anthea 2:08:17

Right, right, yeah, and they already have two kids and a job, and they can't afford to have a a third kid.

SPEAKER_06 2:08:23

That's just the numbers, right? Like that's not Elisa's opinion. That's as as they would say at pursuit, that's not my opinion. That's just the Bible. Um no, I mean, uh no, but I mean, like, that's those are from what the best that we have been able to determine, that is the truth of these categories of people, which is why the error is an error.

Anthea 2:08:41

Right, right, right. And it just it really struck me listening to this. I was like, there like if you went to someone I don't want to be, I want to be cautious about this because like it's not like there aren't people in the rationalist community experiencing economic privation um for any number of reasons, although often because they're trans. Like that's that's a not insignificant portion of the of the community is is trans folks who, you know, are are therefore experiencing or I I shouldn't I shouldn't be like Premise one, there's a not insignificant portion of the community that is trans. Premise two, there is a higher level of economic privation among the trans community than among the cis community. Conclusion, there's some proportion of the rationalist community who are trans people who are experiencing economic privation. Checks out.

Jake 2:09:49

I think But are they the kind of people who get platformed?

Anthea 2:09:51

Are they the ones that are actually partly I'm thinking of that that uh person that the essay that you or the post that you pointed me to, Ernie, from uh the former Zizian, um, who I know experience homelessness, like after, you know, as part of that that whole experience. Um so like I don't want to say that there's no rationalists who aren't working shit jobs or experiencing poverty or anything like that. There are people who are probably finding real uh uh uh value in in rationalist thought and uh uh methodology. And also, I think a lot of people in the community, and especially the ones who are often writing these like you know, here's how you can solve all your problems with rational thought, have never worked a customer service job and never had a serious question about listen, I've never struggled to pay rent, but I have been like, fuck, I can't live in the neighborhood I want to live in because I can't afford rent in that neighborhood. I don't know, my lease is ending and I don't know where I'm gonna live. We lived on a boat for a month. Like this. We lived on a boat. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I there's there's just such a touch grass need here, I think. That's all I had to say about that. Real middle class people around here, real middle class problems.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:30

I so one of my um first in-person introductions to the rationalist, effective altruist community at large is I had a flatmate here who was deeply embedded among them. And I didn't realize for kind of a long time because she was just really uh in all of these different community stuff, and she never seemed to have a job and dumpster dived all her food and uh tried. To like make everything from scratch, which is like all pretty great in terms of uh you know, I make a bunch of stuff from scratch too. I try and scavenge as much as possible too. Not from scratch, but you know sure, yeah. It's it's just doing that kind of stuff, but then uh sometimes it would tip over into weirdness, and that she was like, she'd get all together her all the money that she had together and she would donate it to you know the effective altruist organizations. And I was like, Yeah, she should really be using that to you know live. Um and she also developed like uh digestive problems because she was eating fermented trash all the time, and she's like, I'm gonna sign up to this um you know medical trial because they'll pay me a small amount of money and I'll be able to uh maybe get my digestion looked at. And it's like, no, it's because you're eating fermented trash, dude.

Jake 2:12:56

Like that's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:00

Yeah. Yeah. I hope. Um, anyways, she was also very middle class, had a lot of money in her family, uh, was choosing to live like this because she believed that this was the right thing to do. So it it it was odd in a sense that she uh could have had like uh a more comfortable life and could have chosen to like try and pursue I don't know, even though it's like she could have pursued a job to earn to give, right?

SPEAKER_06 2:13:34

Or I mean here's another Sorry, sorry, no, I didn't want to cut you off. Go, go.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:41

No, I don't I didn't have a point.

SPEAKER_06 2:13:43

It's it's it's bewildering.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:45

Well the other thing that's It was a bewildering situation, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:13:48

Yeah, the other thing that stands out to me is sort of like well, there's also an absence of of kind of a communal or group action, which is weird because these people all know each other and some of them start cults um together. Yeah, and so it is like, well, but why is why is this where the rubber meets the road? Is you as the individual choosing to dumpster dive all the time. What if you and some of your friends, like, I mean, you could you did weekly potlucks where you wasted less food or something because you guys all ate communally, or you I mean, this is the whole idea of communes, right? Is like, or part of it. Like, I I just think it's really interesting that yeah, like much like effective altruism doesn't say that you have to earn to give, like, it's not necessarily implicit in the premise. And just like rationalism doesn't, I don't think, actually say like the unit of like the the sub like the the political subject or like the acting subject must be an individual. It seems like it always shakes out that way. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:53

I I I will say I do think you know, we are talking about a very wide community with a very wide diversity of beliefs and circumstances, so I'm hesitant to ascribe any, you know, wider beliefs or any like uh it's hard to say like they all do this or they all do that.

Anthea 2:15:13

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:14

That's fair. So I I just and I and I and I do think also a lot of them, you know, a lot of them end up in San Francisco. A lot of them definitely have trouble paying rent. That's fair. That's a good point.

Anthea 2:15:24

That's a fair point.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:27

It's an expensive place to live, and just a lot of them are like, you know, many of them do like I I I know some of the people who I do know who are in this community, a lot of them do like, you know, van life, they're trying to live from first principles as well. Like it can have those more community dimensions, but just oftentimes the one that gelevated and the ones that filter through to larger culture are the people who have a shitload of money and have a much bigger platform to do these things. And it's just that's the form of rationalism and effective altruism that has the most influence on uh like people who have the ability to make decisions about the world.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:09

Um that's that's the stuff that's like the most alien and harmful, I think.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:16

And that's that's the most freaky form that it takes, is when you have, you know, not that Elon Musk is an effective altruist, but he is a singulitarian, and he's like, we're gonna make upload our consciousness to the you know machines, and then we have to think of all of the machine people in the future, the infinite lives we can save if we accelerate AI right now. And it's just like cuckoo, it's cuckoo banana stuff.

SPEAKER_06 2:16:42

Yeah. And I should clarify that too. Like, I will, I will make totalizing statements. But when I say like it always seems to be, or things like that, I'm trying to, I think what I'm trying to get at is what you're saying is sort of like what becomes the dominant narrative, what becomes like the most shared posts, what becomes the most upvoted, what becomes I mean, you know, it starts on a small scale and then is, you know, dis that's the part that disseminates broadly through the culture. And that could just be, you know, or not just, but a factor is certainly probably like capitalist hijacking of things that tend to support capitalism. Uh or or, you know, the the person, the people with the most money just having the biggest microphone. But I I do think that it is I I still feel that there is like a there is a and you know, every every community probably doesn't do enough to question its own assumptions and its own epistemics.

Anthea 2:17:35

And I think that the rationalist community does a much better job of that than most. It is their favorite hobby, is to sit down and go, well, what's up with our epistemics?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:47

Doesn't that make them better at it though?

Anthea 2:17:49

See, okay, that is my question. Sure, right. You can do it. Are you effective at it? As it were. Yeah, no, that's a fair question. Um sometimes yes, sometimes no. I you know, I in terms of totalizing narratives and and totalizing statements, you know, this is part of I think this is part of why I compare it to Catholicism so frequently, is because I'm like, there there are batchy insane Catholics.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:13

Hell yeah, there are.

Anthea 2:18:14

And there's an edifice of Catholicism that has a lot of problems that are built in that are structural. Um and then there's like and then there's just like your day-to-day Catholics who are like using Catholicism to inform their life, and they're they're pretty much fine. Like, and there's a lot of rationalists who are like pretty much fine. This is informing their life, it's not the entirety of their life, but it is, you know, it's given them some useful tools, and that's pretty much. Effective altruism is just tithing. Effective altruism, they're like effective altruism, they're like, we think you should make an oath to give a certain percentage of your paycheck to uh to one of the charities that we recommend. That's a tithe.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:08

That's a tithe. And then you've got theologians like Yankowski here, like devising the 98 names of God or whatever, and like the the great chain of being like Thomas Aquinas, and like making all these, you know, it's it's it's the way he's writing this book, this this Harry Potter fanfiction is a lot like the way that Thomas Aquinas structures all of his arguments about the natural world. And like I feel the same way reading it, which is like, dude, who gives a fuck? Like, we don't need this.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:38

We don't have to do this, you know.

Anthea 2:19:41

And yet, you agreed to be here with me for the last three hours while we did this. And I can't thank you enough for it. Yes, I'm really excited to have you. We have been recording for three hours, and I think is the recorder on No, it's not.

Jake 2:19:58

No my god, don't fucking do that to me. I know. It's the best way to freak out of podcasts.

Anthea 2:20:03

Oh my god! Uh, since we've already done that once. Um uh but we have been recording for three hours. We have officially, my friends, hit the point where the fic gets good. It starts to cry.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:15

It can tell. It can tell it's already heating up. This is that is I mean, I've certainly had a lot of fun, you know, having somebody read it to me and then bullshitting about it.

Anthea 2:20:25

That's the idea. That's that's the podcast, baby. That's the griff. That's the monster.

Jake 2:20:30

I'll be honest, when I heard you were having a guest, I was like, I hope I can still be on it, because I'm not going to read this on my own. So you're just gonna have to catch me up on the next episode.

Anthea 2:20:41

Absolutely. Um uh so we will return at some point in the future with uh God, what happens in the next chapter?

Jake 2:20:49

Let's just read it.

Anthea 2:20:50

Um, not. I'm tired. Uh no spoilers. What the fuck is the next chapter? Um yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a spoiler. It's called the planning fallacy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. There's some there's some weird shit. Oh, oh, that's right. Okay. Next chapter is gonna be on the floor. Alright, anyway, on that note, thank you so much for joining us. Ernie, thank you for sticking around from the UK. Jake and Alisa, thanks for joining me in my bedroom with mics today. Uh, and all of you, all you uh vase boys and girls out there listening, thank you for sitting with us. We will be back at another time. Um, I don't have a good sign-off yet. Stay, Frosty. Yeah, you'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. It's a work in progress.

Jake 2:21:45

Have fun on your bones. Have fun on your bones.

Anthea 2:21:51

The Harry Potter universe is copyright to J.K. Rowling, and Harry Potter and the methods of rationality and the sequences are copyright Eliezer Gitkowski. 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 Sharealite 4.0 international license. The music you heard in this episode is The Watchmaker's Secret by Nikolai Pedrous on Hope Sounds.