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Yvain comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Unnamed 27 November 2010 08:25AM

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Comment author: Yvain 14 December 2010 09:24:23PM *  24 points [-]

The probability of magic is still vanishingly vanishingly low, but given how useful magic would be it might still be worth Harry's time to test for it.

I hereby dub this class of argument Pascal's Muggle

Comment author: alethiophile 17 December 2010 10:33:10PM 4 points [-]

It's also worth noting that the letter does not only provide several orders of magnitude jump in the prior for whether magic exists or not, but also provides a method of testing its existence that is much lower-cost than before (beforehand, Harry would have had to do some fairly strenuous things to break The Masquerade; with the letter in hand, he merely needs to send a reply.)