harry potter and the methods of rationality book buy

His ultimate goal is to rule the country by combining Muggle technology with magic.Īnother thing which I like about the book is its character development, something which the original books honestly didn’t have much of. Think of the possibilities if a brilliant mind capable of applying scientific knowledge on the spur of the moment also had a wand.

Think of what a Time Turner could achieve if used cleverly. Think of transfiguring someone’s clothes into acid as a means to harm them, or some rubbish lying about into explosive chemicals.

Harry, by virtue of being raised by Muggles (who love him on this occasion), realizes the virtue of Muggle science and what would potentially happen if he combined those with spells. It always struck me as strange that wizards use quills and ink instead of pens (there’s a part in the book where Lucius Malfoy of all people curiously examines a pen as smart Muggle technology) and are not aware of the miracles of modern science, many of which are indeed like magic (think emails instead of owl post). It’s marrying the miracles of witchcraft and wizardry with common science, i.e. It’s what you do when you tell yourself, “Ok, let’s just calm down for a minute and think clearly.”įinally, let’s come to what this book is trying to do. Secondly, what is rational thinking? To put it loosely, it asks you to observe the facts, think logically and come to conclusions. It violates canon of course, but it won’t leave you with a feeling of having witnessed scandalous blasphemy. This article is a review.įirstly, if you are a fan of the original Harry Potter books by Rowling, this book will not offend you.

I had the privilege of reading it recently, and was left very impressed. One such work of fan fiction is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, written by American AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky under the name of his blog – Less Wrong. fan fiction, set in the Harry Potter universe. So it is not surprising that a lot of budding authors have written offshoot books, i.e. Chances are that you have wondered that wizards and witches, for all their magical abilities, live in a primitive environment where they haven’t heard of things such as electricity and aeroplanes. Rowling, chances are that you have wondered about a lot of the concepts presented in the books. If you’ve read the original Harry Potter books by J. He, and people of his kind, can cast spells and curses with their wands to achieve magical effects. He lives in a magical world which co-exists with the normal world as we know it, i.e. Assuming you have not been living under a rock, you know who Harry Potter is.

Harry potter and the methods of rationality book buy