- Every time someone cries out in prayer and I can't answer, I feel guilty about not being God. - That doesn't sound good. - I understand that I have a problem, and I know what I need to do to solve it, all right? I'm working on it. Of course, Harry hadn't said what the solution was. The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and become God.

My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren't many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche. It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think.

There's something in science like the shine of the Patronus Charm, driving back all sorts of darkness and madness.

I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised.

Singularitarians are the munchkins of the real world. We just ignore all the usual dungeons and head straight for the cycle of infinite wish spells.

Between hindsight bias, fake causality, positive bias, anchoring/priming, et cetera et cetera, and above all the dreaded confirmation bias, once an idea gets into your head, it's probably going to stay there.

Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.