Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky Page B

feeling.
“Okay.
You
pick a name.”
    “Mr. Cannon,” Ron said at once. “For the Chudley Cannons.”
    “Ah…” Harry knew he was going to terribly regret asking this. “Who or what are the Chudley Cannons?”
    “
Who’re the Chudley Cannons?
Only the most brilliant team in the whole history of Quidditch! Sure, they finished at the bottom of the league last year, but -”
    “What’s Quidditch?”
    Asking this was also a mistake.
    “So let me get this straight,” Harry said as it seemed that Ron’s explanation (with associated hand gestures) was winding down. “Catching the Snitch is worth
one hundred and fifty points?
”
    “Yeah -”
    “How many ten-point goals does one side usually score
not
counting the Snitch?”
    “Um, maybe fifteen or twenty in professional games -”
    “That’s just wrong. That violates every possible rule of game design. Look, the rest of this game sounds like it might make sense, sort of, for a sport I mean, but you’re basically saying that catching the Snitch overwhelms almost any ordinary point spread. The two Seekers are up there flying around looking for the Snitch and usually not interacting with anyone else, spotting the Snitch first is going to be mostly luck -”
    “It’s not luck!” protested Ron. “You’ve got to keep your eyes moving in the right pattern -”
    “That’s not
interactive,
there’s no back-and-forth with the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else’s work moot. It’s like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position so that you could be the Most Important Player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first Seeker, the King’s idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn’t understand the rules?” Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing…
    Ron’s face pulled into a scowl. “If you don’t like Quidditch, you don’t have to make fun of it!”
    “If you can’t criticise, you can’t optimise. I’m suggesting how to
improve the game.
And it’s very simple. Get rid of the Snitch.”
    “They won’t change the game just ‘cause
you
say so!”
    “I
am
the Boy-Who-Lived, you know. People will listen to me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at Hogwarts, the innovation will spread.”
    A look of absolute horror was spreading over Ron’s face. “But, but if you get rid of the Snitch, how will anyone know when the game ends?”
    “
Buy… a… clock.
It would be a lot fairer than having the game sometimes end after ten minutes and sometimes not end for hours, and the schedule would be a lot more predictable for the spectators, too.” Harry sighed. “Oh, stop giving me that look of absolute horror, I probably won’t
actually
take the time to destroy this pathetic excuse for a national sport and remake it stronger and smarter in my own image. I’ve got way, way,
way
more important stuff to worry about.” Harry looked thoughtful. “Then again, it wouldn’t
take
much time to write up the Ninety-Five Theses of the Snitchless Reformation and nail it to a church door -”
    “Potter,” drawled a young boy’s voice, “
what
is that on your face and
what
is standing next to you?”
    Ron’s look of horror was replaced by utter hatred. “
You!
”
    Harry turned his head; and indeed it was Draco Malfoy, who might have been forced to wear standard school robes, but was making up for that with a trunk looking at least as magical and far more elegant than Harry’s own, decorated in silver and emeralds and bearing what Harry guessed to be the Malfoy family crest, a beautiful fanged serpent over crossed ivory wands.
    “Draco!” Harry said. “Er, or Malfoy if you prefer, though that kind of sounds like