It's worse than that. What's something you're likely to have on hand at all times, and worse, are then likely to hand off to someone other person, who will hand it off to another, and so on and so forth?

Even if wizarding currency is protected against such shenanigans, some unknown number of UK sterling could have fractions of Voldemort's soul in them.

I, like many people, have a father. After a long time of not really caring about the whole thing he's expressed an interest in philosophy this Christmas season. Now, as we know a lot of philosophy is rather confused and I don't see any big reasons for him to start thinking truth is irrelevant or other silly things. I don't think the man is considering reading anything particularly long or in-depth.

So, I'm asking for book recommendations for short-ish introductions to philosophy that don't get it all wrong. Solid, fundamental knowledge about how we know what we know, why we can know it and so on. The whole less wrong thing really. I think i'll also send him a copy of epistomology 101 for beginners.

All ideas are welcome even if it's not 100% the right book.

I tried that before, I'd just turn it off and get back into bed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

I don't find this obvious. Why do you think this?

So we have lots of guides on how to be rational... but do we have any materials that consider what makes a person decide to pursue rationality and consciously decide to adopt rationality as an approach to life?

Recently I was talking to someone and realised they didn't accept that a rational approach was always the best one, and it was harder than I expected to come up with an argument that would be compelling for someone that didn't think rationality was all that worthwhile... not neccessarily irrational, but just not a conscious follower/advocate of it. I think a lot of the arguments for it are actually quite philosophical or in some people's case mathematical. Got me thinking, what actually turns someone into a rationality fan? A rational argument? Oh wait....

I've got some ideas, but nothing I'd consider worth writing down at this stage... is there anything to prevent wheel reinvention?

So we have lots of guides on how to be rational... but do we have any materials that consider what makes a person decide to pursue rationality and consciously decide to adopt rationality as an approach to life?

Recently I was talking to someone and realised they didn't accept that a rational approach was always the best one, and it was harder than I expected to come up with an argument that would be compelling for someone that didn't think rationality was all that worthwhile... not neccessarily irrational, but just not a conscious follower/advocate of it. I think a lot of the arguments for it are actually quite philosophical or in some people's case mathematical. Got me thinking, what actually turns someone into a rationality fan? A rational argument? Oh wait....

I've got some ideas, but nothing I'd consider worth writing down at this stage... is there anything to prevent wheel reinvention?

I foresee rationalist Dracula fan-fiction in our future.

charities which have minimal to do with saving lives wouldn't be considered useful at all

That's a rather... extreme attitude.

So you want a government policy which explicitly says that charities which do not directly save lives are worthless?

they have to apply a criteria showing how effective they spend money.

What measure of effectiveness would you propose such that it is easy to calculate and applicable to all charities?