Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

"Harry got right aboard the good ship "Ignorance for the masses is the one true way" - He is keeping his most valuable insight (the true patronus) secret, and information control is foundational to the Bayesean conspiracy, which means it fundamentally violates one of the core principles of science - Which is of course to tell everybody everything you discover because this is the only reliable way to find and correct errors in your thinking, methods and experiments.".

On just about every other thing that he would keep secret, I would agree with you. On this one, nope.

The secret of the Patronus Form 2.0 would be seen by Harry as being on the same level as that of the Manhattan Project. In other words, one that must not be shared by the masses. Under any circumstances short of everyone being of a skill level and a mental state to use the spell. He learned that degree of caution from Quirrell, who felt that the sharing of the nuclear secret between Muggle scientists and Muggle politicians as being pathologically stupid. (with arguably good reasons). Who wants to rule over a heap of ashes? Not Quirrell and not by extension Tom Riddle

If you spread the secret of Patronus 2.0 around people who are not ready to use the thing, there would be carnage, left, right and centre every time they came up against threats like Dementors, Trolls and stuff.

And this degree of caution is reinforced throughout the fic. It is an article of faith amongst witches and wizards that you do not share dangerous secrets amongst those who are not on the right level of skill to use it. It is the one thing that Magical Britain's spell-casters get right that Muggles routinely get wrong.

edited 10th Apr '12 6:23:30 AM by TamH70

Yeah, but because of that, The Magic Goes Away.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Well only having seven years of compulsory training in what makes you a witch or a wizard does not help matters. Especially when most of the Professors at your school are not at the same level as Methods!Quirrel, Methods!Mc Gonagal or Methods!Snape. Or are ghosts, fer frick's sake. Especially when your Magical Schools start at Secondary level with no sodding Primary education to back that up with. There are obvious problems with that that anyone who has ever been a kid of eleven years and upwards, has those of their own or has them as siblings/cousins would be able to point out to you.

Wizards and witches to be should start at six years of age. Four is too early, eleven is too damned late. Muggle-borns may have a problem unless the Ministry of Magic sorts out its comprehension problem with Muggles in general and sets up Primary Schools who are in on the Masquerade or else set up satellite schools in Magical Britain that Muggle infants can be bussed to.

edit: if you really want to read an illuminating and conversely (oddly) darkly entertaining account of who Leo Szilard was, and what he and his contemporaries got up to, I cannot recommend enough that you hunt down "Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon" by P.D Smith. http://www.peterdsmith.com/doomsday-men-the-real-dr-strangelove-and-the-dream-of-the-superweapon/

Not good bed time reading though.

edited 10th Apr '12 4:41:58 AM by TamH70

Confound Amazon Kindle. Confound it. It drives me to spend.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Did ya buy it?

What do you think?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Eh, me? Think? Looking for the wrong thing there, buddy, 8-)

Just kidding. It is a brilliant book though. Got it at my local library and I think I will go see if it is still there.

Btw, I don't know what was more disturbing. Hearing you say that in my head with Rational!Harry's voice, or hearing you say that with whatever my Rational!Quirrel's sounds like.

edited 10th Apr '12 5:08:33 AM by TamH70

You'd better read me with Gene Wilder's voice, especially as Young Frankenstein. That, is how I sound in my own head, at the moment.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Wait til you read the bit about what the Nazis did to Fritz Haber's family - Gene won't be enough I am afraid.

Is it scarier than what Voldemort did to those journalists?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Yup. Much.

The point is not that sharing knowlege is safe- It amounts to sharing power, after all.

The point is that the free exchange of information is one of the key diffrences between the scientific revolution and the countless forgotten secretive schools of scholarship that rose and fell over the course of history.

Some of those schools and traditions got really damm far, as demonstrated by the WTF moments archeologist experience when they dig up ancient batteries in greece and hand smithed sixshooters from chinese tombs. And then their knowlege was lost.

Sharing knowlege preserves it - but beyond that, it is also key to catching errors. When working at the boundaries of human knowlege, most theories will be wrong because if the truth was obvious, someone would have discovered it already. Experimentation is a way to shift through this ocean of error for truth, but even those insights that survive this filter need checking by other people. Preferably lots of other, clever, people.

Harrys instincts on secrecy grate against my sensibilities like chalk, a screech that whispers "down this path lies madness and error"

Even granting that some insights it would be irresponsible to share with the world, you cannot keep even those to just yourself and have any certainty that said insight is true.

Taking the true patronus as an example, odds are pretty good that Harry is wrong about the details of how dementors think, but because he doesnt discuss it with anyone, noone points out that he is over extrapolating.

Edited for legibility.

edited 10th Apr '12 6:38:38 AM by Izeinsummer

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres killed a Dementor. Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres killed a Dementor. I could go on repeating that all day and it still would be awesome. IF he did not have a fundamental understanding on what Dementors actually are as opposed to what every other person in Magical Britain (and their canon!creator, J.K Rowling) believes they are, that deed would be impossible. And there is no-one else in Magical Britain apart from him and Hermione Jean Granger that are capable at this stage of the fic of being able to do it.

Secrecy is vital in magic. It is also vital in science. Until the level of knowledge and skill in the base of the target population is ready to make that step up and be able to learn the secrets. Otherwise you get kids making bombs in school toilets that don't just blow up the lavvy pan, as they call it over here, but the whole sodding school and them and their classmates with it.

And since we have not as yet found out why Atlantis disappeared I wouldn't put it past mister Yudkowsky from saying that is exactly what happened to Atlantis on a bigger scale, 8-)

Yeah. The nuclear weapons issue is one obvious answer, but at least nuclear weapons are quite difficult and dangerous to create, and if you try on your own you're just as likely to get yourself killed without causing a detonation. With magic it's far worse. The obvious in-fic example is the True Patronus, the secret of which would make the entire world apart from Harry, Hermione and whoever Harry can manage to convert and train up defenseless against Dementors (and, for what it's worth, Lethifolds, not that these have really ever been significant to anyone ever).*

Now imagine if Harry has the obvious insight concerning Transfiguration and critical masses of plutonium—that's far worse. First-year children able to kamikaze cities on a whim, anyone? (I'm not even getting into antimatter, since that could plausibly be said to be too different from ordinary matter to understand sufficiently to Transfigure.)

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

I get why the wizarding world hates free information flow - but this way of limiting the dangers of magic dooms them to terminal decline, since every time someone abuses some magical technique in a sufficently spectacular way, it has a good chance of no longer being taught, and further, it is ineffectual - The universe has no particular interest in keeping your secrets for you, so sooner or later someone will work it out again from first principles, and raw intellect is no guarantee of good intent, so all that is accomplished is to leave later generations weaker against new dark lords.

It'd be safer to Imperius / unbreakable wow everyone with an absolute prohibition against mass destruction. Say, when they enroll at hogwarts.

• Blinks* Eh.. Okay.. Magical compulsions work. Why the heck does magical britain even have prisons?

edited 10th Apr '12 9:29:13 AM by Izeinsummer

Because, as we've been shown many and multifarious times, they're stupid. Also, because a compulsion against further crimes keeps criminals from hurting more people, which is one reason for prisons to exist, but doesn't really punish them or provide a deterrent, which is the other.

Imperius doesn't work reliably or in the long term, unless constantly reapplied, and people with sufficient will can break it (and you can surely expect any potential Dark Lord to have sufficient will). The only magical compulsion I can think of that would do what you want in re: compelling everyone not to mass-destruct is the Unbreakable Vow, which has other downsides (needs person to agree to it, requires a Binder who will sacrifice permanently some part of their magic). Not to mention that it just really squicks me out thinking of everyone having their will bound by default as a precautionary measure; I find the idea morally repugnant.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

That repugnace is why I specified mass destruction - The idea being that anyone who objects to merely being prohibited from killing people wholesale, should probably not be taught.. anything. Including literacy. The permanent sacrifice is as Harry already worked out quite easily accomodated. And it is well established that the wizarding world is willing to go to quite insane lengths to limit the destruction magic wrecks. The interdict of Merlin prevents you from comprehending entire classes of books. So the inviolability of the mind? Already given up on that.

edited 10th Apr '12 9:48:03 AM by Izeinsummer

Regardless of what you're prohibiting, I find the idea of binding people's will wholesale as a precautionary measure unacceptable. I consider mind-fuckery of that sort only marginally less bad than murder, and it's justified only when you'd be justified in killing the person otherwise. This is not because I have any inclination toward or affinity for mass murder, but because the mind is sacred, damnit.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

That is a fine and reasonable moral stance. Which wizarding Britain quite clearly does not share. See: Veritaserum, the cavalier way Obliviate gets used, and oh, right, the Interdict of Merlin. Try figuring out how the heck that could possibly work if you want to be really creeped out. Imperius is illegal, but honestly, given what they permit..

edited 10th Apr '12 9:59:37 AM by Izeinsummer

...I'm trying to think about how the Interdict of Merlin might work. Does it affect the writer or the reader? Can a person write down stuff about magic for their own reference, later? If they write it down and also know the magic, will it be understandable? You're right, either way that's got to be some truly high-quality mindfuckery to pull that off.

.../me hides in a corner.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

From Mo R Chapter 23:

edited 10th Apr '12 10:25:27 AM by anotherblackhat

So it works like Jabir in Genius The Transgression: the notes make no sense...

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

So withholding information is okay but making people swear not to use WMD's is wrong? okay...

Science is a slow, slow process. Discoveries aren't so much the work of one genius as the work of hundreds of scientists over decades. Holding information secret can hamper their progress. We wouldn't have gotten to the moon without rockets.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

For all that has been said about the idiocy of certain things that canon!Potterverse wizards do and do not do, I do not think that they could justifiably be called stupid. They are sadly ignorant of what Muggles can do in every field, not just science, but you show me any Muggle who can summon water if they are thirsty without going to the tap to get a drink. Go ahead, I am waiting. Ignorance is not the same as stupidity. If they were stupid, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry could not have been raised by just four wizards and witches, no matter how great their raw power was.

I keep hammering home the nuclear weapon issue precisely because that is just one of the two things mankind has ever messed with that can kill us all. The other of course being biological weapons. Want a primer in just how close that particular face of Satan came to wiping us off the face of the earth? Get hold of this book: "Biohazard" by Ken Alibek.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biohazard-Ken-Alibek/dp/0099414643

Other e-book and printed book vendors are also available

Who is Ken Alibek? Just a guy who weaponized just about every biohazard agent in the alphabet. His Wikipedia page is only the half of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Alibek As far as I know, Vladimir Putin still wants his head on a stick.

And in case you missed it, the point I am trying to make is that spreading knowledge of the improved Patronus Charm 2.0 is just as dangerous to Methods!Magical Britain as a nuclear device initiating or an SS-18 Satan missile warhead scattering a weaponized smallpox and influenza virus combination over a target city would be in our world. They are just not ready.

Yet.

And someone has to grasp the nettle and write a fic where the whole system of Magical education (in Magical Britain) gets a kick in the backside and dragged screaming into at least the twentieth century. They need a Hogwarts-type Nursery School/Kindergarten system, a Hogwarts-type Primary School/Elementary School system and for Abigor's sake a godsthricedamned Hogwarts-type University system! (I wish there was a way to write that last sentence in Firefox 11 with thirty foot high letters of fire, I really do.) With Muggle studies taught properly right from the first fricking day. I don't care what Potterverse it gets done in, either in canon or in Mister Yudkowsky's - but someone has to do Rowling's dirty work for her.

Btw, got my Doomsday Men book from the library. Not a book I want to read in an ill-lit room.

edited 10th Apr '12 12:05:04 PM by TamH70

Also, really, what's the point of the Four Houses?

Also, damn you man, if I keep buying books like these I'll end up on some sort of watchlist!

edited 10th Apr '12 11:46:37 AM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.