...there's something in science like the shine of the Patronus Charm, driving back all sorts of darkness and madness... — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“You've got to have an imagination to make it to the stars. The sort of species that wouldn't invent science fiction, probably… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
My successes already accomplished have mostly been taking existing science and getting people to apply it in their everyday lives. — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“And one of the hidden secrets of science, passed down from a few rare teachers to their grad students, is how to… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
Moore's Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point. — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
Science has heroes, but no gods. The great Names are not our superiors, or even our rivals, they are passed milestones on… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
Most Muggles lived in a world defined by the limits of what you could do with cars and telephones. Even though Muggle… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
A scientist worthy of a lab coat should be able to make original discoveries while wearing a clown suit, or give a… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words that can never be truly beautiful. Elementary science textbooks describe… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science, the very latest controversies, are worth reporting on. How often do you… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
Nothing you'll read as breaking news will ever hold a candle to the sheer beauty of settled science. Textbook science has carefully… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“Then again, it'd taken more than two hundred years after the invention of the scientific method before any Muggle scientists had thought… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“People had no sense of history, they learned about chemistry and biology and astronomy and thought that these matters had always been… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“It's a most peculiar psychology—this business of 'Science is based on faith too, so there!' Typically this is said by people who… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“Trying to figure out how something works on that deep level, the first ninety-nine explanations you come up with are wrong. The… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“You're mine now, Harry thought at the walls of Diagon Alley, and all the shops and items, and all the shopkeepers and… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“Then you get the wrong answer and you can't go to the Moon that way! Nature isn't a person, you can't trick… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“We underestimate the power of science, and overestimate the power of personal observation. A peer-reviewed, journal-published, replicated report is worth far more… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“Science taps the power of human understanding to look at the world and figure out how it works. It can't fail without… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
“But I really am Ravenclaw, you know, not Slytherin. I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“If you regard evidence as a constraint and seek to free yourself, you sell yourself into the chains of your whims. For you cannot… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“He really really really shouldn't have done that. Amazing how much more obvious that became one second after it was too late.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution. — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“There’s a technique we use in our local rationalist cluster called “Is That Your True Rejection?”, and it works like this: Before you stake… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit. — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“Knowing that Draco's hopeful face had probably been drilled into him by months of practice did not make it any less effective, Harry observed.… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
The strength of a theory is not what it allows, but what it prohibits; if you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
It is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“Frigideiro! " said Hermione again from the desk next to him. Her water was solid ice and there were white crystals forming on the rim… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“And then Harry Potter had launched in to a speech that was inspiring, yet vague. A speech to the effect that Fred and George… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
“And I know that I'd just make myself unhappy by comparing that reality to... something perfect that I built up in my imagination.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share
