Ep. 7: Reciprocity, pt. 1 - A Good Light

In part 1 of chapter 7, Harry meets the Weasleys. The crew learn what a belief is, kind of, and about the "third most important project in the world." CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses eugenics. Citations and further reading, Part 1 HPMoR, Chapter 7. Eliezer Yudkowsky. https://hpmor.com/chapter/7 Elisa’s show notes: https://www.tumblr.com/ecc-poetry/tagged/hpmor%20and%20the%20limits%20of%20rationality “Rowling backs Potter fan fiction,” Darren Waters. BBC, 27 May 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3753001.stm  “Crisis of Faith,” Yudkowksy. LessWrong, 10 Oct 2008.  https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BcYBfG8KomcpcxkEg/crisis-of-faith “Making Beliefs Pay Rent,” Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 28 July 2007. https://www.lesswrong.com/s/7gRSERQZbqTuLX5re/p/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A   “Belief in Belief,” Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 29 July 2007. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief   Breaking the Spell, Daniel C. Dennett. Viking Penguin, 2006. https://ia601503.us.archive.org/29/items/breaking-the-spell/Breaking%20the%20Spell.pdf “JK Rowling invented Quidditch after a row with her boyfriend,” Hannah Furness. The Telegraph, 18 May 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130519114811/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10065868/JK-Rowling-invented-Quidditch-after-a-row-with-her-boyfriend.html “Cricket,” Wikipedia. Accessed 15 July 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket “The Longest Cricket Match in History,” Matt Harris. It’s Only Cricket, accessed 15 July 2026. https://www.itsonlycricket.com/longest-cricket-match-in-history “The Longest Game in History.” MiLB.com, accessed 15 July 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20250306005814/https://www.milb.com/news/gcs-41224646  “Misfits & Magic: the M-word.” Original content by Dimension 20, 2021. Edit by geirawsm, 19 Nov 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-s3zcYfFis “Dath Ilan,” Yudkowsky et al. LessWrong, updated 13 June 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260711172420/https://www.lesswrong.com/w/dath-ilan  “How to Make Superbabies,” GeneSmith and kman. LessWrong, 19 Feb 2025. https://archive.ph/sqkXi “I hope somebody funds this, arguably the third most important project in the world,” Yudkowsky. Twitter, 20 Feb 2025. https://archive.ph/20250304075600/https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1892374125089341444  “Marriage: An Address to the Deaf,” Alexander Graham Bell. Deaf Rare Books, 1898. https://ida.gallaudet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=deaf_rare_books “There are of course always going to be some traits that are on the borderline of what we might consider ethically permissible,” GeneSmith. LessWrong comment, 2 June 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20260715230946/https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k8pj8kMxotFGqn4mp/request-use-epilogenics-instead-of-eugenics-in-most?commentId=RZFpf6xHCNGiQqhBt  Jake is correct: IQ is ordinally scaled. “A test score equal to the average of one’s age group defined an IQ of 100. [...] Thus an IQ score on the [Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale] (a deviation IQ) is simply a reflection of an individual’s relative standing with respect to others of the same age. it is not an absolute score. In the jargon of psychological measurement theory, IQ is an ordinal scale, where we are simply rank-ordering people. There is no absolute zero for IQ, as there is for height or weight, and someone with an IQ of 150 is not twice as intelligent as another with an IQ of 75, in the sense that someone 6 feet (1.8 m) tall is twice as tall as someone of 3 feet (0.9 m). It is not even appropriate to claim that the 10-point difference between IQ scores of 110 and 100 is the same as the 10-point difference between IQs of 160 and 150 [...] To say that someone has an IQ of 130 is simply to say that their test score lies within the top 2.5 per cent of a representative sample of people of the same age.” IQ and Human Intelligence, N. J. Mackintosh. Oxfor University Press, 1998. https://archive.org/details/iqhumanintellige00mack/page/30/mode/2up  "The Eugenic Origins of IQ Testing: Implications for Post-Atkins Litigation," Ajitha Reddy. DePaul Law Review, 2008. https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review