Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Bookshelves

[JesseGalef]

A while back in the Colum­bus Ra­tion­al­ity group, we started won­der­ing: What books would the Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity houses have in each of their libraries? We had fun cat­e­go­riz­ing differ­ent sub­jects:

• Gryffin­dor—Com­bat, ethics, and justice

• Raven­claw—Philos­o­phy, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and math

• Slytherin -In­fluence and power

• Hufflepuff—Hap­piness, pro­duc­tivity, and friendship

And so, I found my­self tak­ing all my books off their shelves this week­end and pick­ing the best to rep­re­sent each ra­tio­nal­ity!House and made them into Face­book cover-image-sized pic­tures. Click each image to see it larger, with a list on the left:

(first posted at Mea­sure of Doubt)

I’m always open to book recom­men­da­tions and sug­ges­tions for good fits. What other books would be es­pe­cially ap­pro­pri­ate for each shelf?

[MichaelHoward]

That is the sec­ond most Raven­claw thing I have ever heard.

[Dr_Manhattan]

Ob­vi­ous sug­ges­tion: Big­ger text, ama­zon links.

[ScottMessick]

Sugges­tions for Slytherin: Sun Tzu’s Art of War and some Niet­zsche, maybe The Will to Power?

Sugges­tion for Raven­claw: An En­quiry Con­cern­ing Hu­man Un­der­stand­ing, David Hume.

[TimS]

I don’t think Niet­zsche fits very eas­ily into any House shelf, but Slytherin least of all.

[Alejandro1]

Most fan­tasy books might be Gryffin­dor, but A Game of Thrones? To­tally Slytherin.

[JesseGalef]

My think­ing for Game of Thrones be­long­ing to Gryffin­dor (though at this point it might just be cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, so please let me know if it sounds right) is that the first book—A Game of Thrones—most heav­ily fea­tures Ned Stark, the paragon of honor and prin­ci­ple. I’m wish­ing that I had put an­other Song of Fire and Ice book on the Slytherin shelf to show con­trast...

[Desrtopa]

On the other hand, Ned Stark trgf rkr­phgrq sbe uvf geb­hoyr naq snvyf gb cer­irag n pvivy jne. Ur hcubyqf ubabe naq ce­vap­v­cyrf, ohg qbrfa’g trg n ybg bs zvyrntr bhg bs gurz.

[Alejandro1]

I see your point, but I agree with Des­r­topa’s re­ply. I would go fur­ther and say that Arq’f ubabe abg bayl snvyrq gb cer­irag pvivy jne, vg npgviryl pn­hfrq vg (ol jnea­vat Pre­frv bs jung ur unq qvfp­bir­erq, naq yn­gre er­wrpg­vat Erayl’f naq Yvg­gyrs­va­tre’f zber frafvoyr cy­naf sbe nib­vq­vat one). So I think he makes more sense as an ex­am­ple for Slyther­ins of how Gryffin­dor val­ues are fool­ish and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

[Oligopsony]

That was my thought with Thucy­dides.

[khafra]

The Strat­egy of Con­flict also seems like it should be moved from the Gryffin­dor book­shelf to the Slytherin. EY de­scribed it as “For­get ra­tio­nal­ist Judo: this is ra­tio­nal­ist eye-goug­ing, ra­tio­nal­ist gang war­fare, ra­tio­nal­ist nu­clear de­ter­rence. Tech­niques that let you win, but you don’t want to look in the mir­ror af­ter­ward.”

[Emile]

EY de­scribed it as “For­get ra­tio­nal­ist Judo: this is ra­tio­nal­ist eye-goug­ing, ra­tio­nal­ist gang war­fare, ra­tio­nal­ist nu­clear de­ter­rence. Tech­niques that let you win, but you don’t want to look in the mir­ror af­ter­ward.”

Nope, that was cousin it.

[khafra]

Whoops. Thanks; that post just seemed like part of the se­quences in my mem­ory.

[Alejandro1]

The Strat­egy of Con­flict is in both Slytherin and Gryffin­dor. I guess Jesse had two copies.

[D_Malik]

Was ex­pect­ing a how-to on stack­ing two rows of books on one book­shelf. This is bet­ter.

[lukeprog]

This has now been picked up by io9.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the read­ing sug­ges­tions! I made a Goodreads list for Raven­claw, feel free to vote and add.

What I re­ally want though is to peek at the books in the re­stricted sec­tion.

[palladias]

The Art of De­cep­tion: Con­trol­ling the Hu­man Ele­ment of Se­cu­rity by Kevin Mit­nick for Slytherin (was re­ally handy to me when book­ing guests for a speaker se­ries, since I needed to get straight to the sched­ulers)

[DanArmak]

Slytherin is miss­ing the Evil Over­lord List (ed. Pro­fes­sor Quir­rel).

[novalis]

Sch­neier’s Se­crets and Lies would prob­a­bly fit well with Slytherin. Borges’s Fic­ciones is some­thing ev­ery Raven­claw would love. And it’s nice and thin so it will fit well on the shelf.

I’m sort of baf­fled by the in­clu­sion of Herodotus, the “Father of Lies”.

[atucker]

A lot of Herodotus’ his­to­ries have in­ter­est­ing sto­ries about peo­ple ex­hibit­ing and not ex­hibit­ing an­cient Greek virtues.

[pinyaka]

Why only chap­ters 1-17 of HPMOR?

[Qiaochu_Yuan]

It’s a teaser. They’re meant to be dis­tributed in meatspace as an easy way to get peo­ple read­ing HPMoR (some­thing longer feels like more of a time in­vest­ment). It in­cludes a link to the rest at the end.

[JesseGalef]

That’s all that’s in the printed pa­per­back ver­sion that I have—I think Eliezer is work­ing on pub­lish­ing a more com­pre­hen­sive vol­ume, but this is all I have.

[[deleted]]

Check /​r/​hp­mor. Also, the git repo now has a print-ready branch.

[jkaufman]

github.com/​jaibot/​hp­mor/​tree/​mas­ter/​hp­mor-prince

[LessWrong]

Well this cer­tainly looks like a fun list. Has any­one else tried it? I’ve never read HPMOR, I’m just lok­ing for some­thing good to read.

[Bluemidas]

Hey ev­ery­one i just started this pod­cast and found my­self ad­dicted to it and its un­der­ly­ing sci­ence of ra­tio­nal­ity can any­one point to the next step so I can learn a lit­tle more. Also I would ap­pre­ci­ate poin­t­ers to un­der­stand all the the­o­ries and meth­ods men­tioned in the pod­cast. And please give me the very ba­sics as I have of­ten been out­wit­ted by the com­plex­ity of Harry evans verus. Also since I am very so­cially in­ept any poin­t­ers in that field would be wel­come.

Fi­nally if there is a proper way to ask for help would be helpful and if I am wrong in ask­ing here please point to the right link please

[[deleted]]

Try the about page here to get a broad idea of what this com­mu­nity is about. As you will read, a good way to start learn­ing what Harry James Pot­ter-Evans-Ver­res knows is by read­ing the se­quences. Don’t be in­timi­dated by the length; if you’ve liked HPMOR enough to come here, you’ll find at least some, if not all, of the se­quences fas­ci­nat­ing.

As for ask­ing for help, you may want to make an in­tro­duc­tory post on the wel­come page. You can give a longer de­scrip­tion of your­self and your goals on this thread. Also, if you give more de­tails about your­self, I ex­pect some­one with some more spe­cific ideas will be able to help.

[victordrake]

The Com­mand to Look, by William Morten­son, might be en­light­en­ing to Slyther­ins. Even though it’s about pho­tog­ra­phy, you can learn things about how your per­sonal ap­pear­ance can be crafted to in­spire the emo­tions in peo­ple that you want to.

[Dahlen]

So… Why is HPMoR cat­e­go­rized un­der all four shelves? Aside from it be­ing based on the book that came up with the idea of Houses in the first place, that is...

[NancyLebovitz]

The Houses are canon.

[Dahlen]

… I’ve known that for more than a decade. Reread my first com­ment; maybe the phras­ing was un­clear, al­though it doesn’t seem un­clear to me.

(I know that HPMoR at­tracts many non-HP-fans into read­ing it, but… se­ri­ously, is there re­ally any­one out there who be­lieves that the frig­gin’ Hog­warts Houses made their first ap­pear­ance into Yud­kowsky’s fan­fic?!)

[TheOtherDave]

Your phras­ing is clear enough, though I did have to read it twice be­fore I ac­tu­ally read “based on”.

[Eugine_Nier]

Put­ting The Screw­tape Let­ters in Slytherin strikes me as a case of com­pletely miss­ing the point.

[NancyLebovitz]

It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, but it’s got rather a lot about how to keep peo­ple con­fused for your own pur­poses. Slyther­ins cer­tainly wouldn’t care that Lewis was against such meth­ods.

[Eugine_Nier]

I don’t think the ad­vice would be prac­ti­cal since it as­sumes the con­fuser has ac­cess to the con­fusee’s mind, both the abil­ity to in­spect it’s con­tents as well as plant and/​or de­rail trains of thought.

[Decius]

It’s not a primer on how to in­fluence peo­ple, it’s a dis­cus­sion of the philos­o­phy be­hind in­fluenc­ing peo­ple. It’s also some­thing that a Slytherin would read for en­ter­tain­ment, in much the same way that a Gryfin­dor would read The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia.

[Eugine_Nier]

The Screw­tape Let­ters as their in­tended to be read strike me as more Hufflepuff, and the por­trayal of hell is suffi­ciently nega­tive that I don’t see a Slytherin en­joy­ing it by sym­pa­thiz­ing with the demons.

[Decius]

If you only read things as the au­thor in­tended that they be read, you’re miss­ing a large frac­tion of the en­ter­tain­ment value.

I won­der where The Ad­ven­tures of Tom Sawyer should be?

[Alejandro1]

I won­der where The Ad­ven­tures of Tom Sawyer should be?

I say Gryffin­dor. Tom is ob­vi­ously a Gryffin­dor, and though the tone of the book is some­what mock­ing, he is nev­er­the­less clearly the hero and triumphs in the end. (As far as I re­mem­ber at least; I haven’t read it since I was a child).

Yet Twain’s ou­vre spans all Houses: The Ad­ven­tures of Huck­le­berry Finn is Hufflepuff, A Con­necti­cut Yan­kee in King Arthur’s Court is Raven­claw, and The Man That Cor­rupted Hadley­burg is Slytherin.

[Oligopsony]

By the same logic, so would the Prince.

[wedrifid]

By the same logic, so would the Prince.

No, it wouldn’t. That would be differ­ent, bad, logic.

[Desrtopa]

Doesn’t Hog­warts have a sin­gle, unified library?

I wouldn’t count on mem­bers of each house stick­ing to books rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their re­spec­tive hats (tvtropes.)

[[deleted]]

I can’t re­mem­ber if it’s in canon that Raven­claw has their own library or if that’s just Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity.

[Randaly]

It’s canon:

The Raven­claw Com­mon Room is a book­worm’s par­adise. There is a large room that serves as a library, and it is said that there are al­most as many books there as in the main library, even if the room looks much, much smaller.

Seems like it’s only Raven­claw, though.

[fubarobfusco]

It’s fanon, at least. A few years back when I was read­ing a lot of HP fic, it seemed a pretty com­mon ad­di­tion.