You will find ambiguity a great ally on your road to power. Give a sign of Slytherin on one day, and contradict it with a sign of Gryffindor the next; and the Slytherins will be enabled to believe what they… — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?" "Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“I am not sure how to explain it, except that - truth matters to us.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
