Mikhail Yagudin

Giving copies of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to the winners of EGMO 2019 and IMO 2020

From the application:

*EA Russia has the oral agreements with IMO [International Math Olympiad] 2020 (Saint Petersburg, Russia) & EGMO [European Girls’ Mathematical Olympiad] 2019 (Kyiv, Ukraine) organizers to give HPMORs [copies of [Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality](http://www.hpmor.com/)] to the medalists of the competitions. We would also be able to add an EA / rationality leaflet made by CFAR (I contacted Timothy Telleen-Lawton on that matter).*

My thoughts and reasoning

[Edit & clarification: The books will be given out by the organisers of the IMO and EGMO as prizes for the 650 people who got far enough to participate, all of which are "medalists".]

My model for the impact of this grant roughly breaks down into three questions:

• What effects does reading HPMOR have on people?
• How good of a target group are Math Olympiad winners for these effects?
• Is the team competent enough to execute on their plan?

What effects does reading HPMOR have on people?

My models of the effects of HPMOR stem from my empirical observations and my inside view on rationality training.

• Empirically, a substantial number of top people in our community have (a) entered due to reading and feeling a deep connection to HPMOR and (b) attributed their approach to working on the long term future in substantial part to the insights they learned from reading HPMOR. This includes some individuals receiving grants on this list, and some individuals on the grant-making team.
• I also weight here my inside view of the skills that HPMOR helps to teach. I’ll try to point at the things I think HPMOR does exceptionally and uniquely well at, though I find it a bit hard to make my models fully explicit here in an appropriate amount of space.
• It is finally worth noting that HPMOR does all of the above things while also being a highly engaging book that has been read by hundreds of thousands of readers (if not more) primarily for pleasure. It is the most reviewed Harry Potter fan fiction on fanfiction.net, which is a remarkable state of affairs.

How good of a target group are Math Olympiad winners for these effects?

I think that Math Olympiad winners are a very promising demographic within which to find individuals who can contribute to improving the long-term future. I believe Math Olympiads select strongly on IQ as well as (weakly) on conscientiousness and creativity, which are all strong positives. Participants are young and highly flexible; they have not yet made too many major life commitments (such as which university they will attend), and are in a position to use new information to systematically change their lives’ trajectories. I view handing them copies of an engaging book that helps teach scientific, practical and quantitative thinking as a highly asymmetric tool for helping them make good decisions about their lives and the long-term future of humanity.

I’ve also visited and participated in a variety of SPARC events, and found the culture there (which is likely to be at least somewhat representative of Math Olympiad culture) very healthy in a broad sense. Participants displayed high levels of altruism, a lot of willingness to help one another, and an impressive amount of ambition to improve their own thinking and affect the world in a positive way. These observations make me optimistic about efforts that build on that culture.

I think it’s important when interacting with minors, and attempting to improve (and thus change) their life trajectories, to make sure to engage with them in a safe way that is respectful of their autonomy and does not put social pressures on them in ways they may not yet have learned to cope with. In this situation, Mikhail is working with/through the institutions that run the IMO and EGMO, and I expect those institutions to (a) have lots of experience with safeguarding minors and (b) have norms in place to make sure that interactions with the students are positive.

Is the team competent enough to execute on their plan?

I don’t have a lot of information on the team, don’t know Mikhail, and have not received any major strong endorsement for him and his team, which makes this the weakest link in the argument. However, I know that they are coordinating both with SPARC (which also works to give books like HPMOR to similar populations) and the team behind the highly successful Russian printing of HPMOR, two teams who have executed this kind of project successfully in the past. So I felt comfortable recommending this grant, especially given its relatively limited downside.