Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

^4 On a side note: Nicolas is over 600 years old.

He may be the only remaining source of information otherwise blocked by the Interdict of Merlin. As if the knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone wouldn't be enough for Harry to drop everything he's doing to find him, that would about tip it.

As to the above, I think it's 100% confirmed that Voldemort has to be Riddle. Not just because of the above information, but because Riddle is a confirmed Parseltongue, as is Harry due to the soul thingy, so unless there is another Heir of Slytherin lying around somewhere...

edited 11th Apr '12 1:06:05 PM by Shinzen

Heir of Slipperin'

Drop Lord

snicker

You've been waiting a while for that setup, haven't you? I bet you think you're a pretty punny guy.

Actually no. That's from the chapter where Voldemort saves Harry's life from a horde of yao fangirls.

Yes, I know. Still a pun.

You know, from the description 'the chapter where Voldemort saves Harry's life from a horde of yaoi fangirls' you might be excused for thinking that MoR is just pure crack all the way.

But it's not me being funny if I'm not the one who made it up. Like that one time I asked a girl "How are you?" and she was like "Fine" and I was like (best Will Smith impresion) "You are fine, girl!" (huge "I am so enjoying myself right now" grin). That was completely improvised BTW.

But it made perfect sense, and we didn't notice until one reviewer explicitly pointed it out. That chapter was one of Yudkowsky's CMOA.

edited 11th Apr '12 1:30:02 PM by TheHandle

Every chapter since 5 has been one of Yudkowski's CMOA's.

edited 11th Apr '12 1:35:08 PM by Shinzen

Well, yes, and no. I'd say that chapter got him an award for "best fanfic author as a fanfic author", in that he fanficced into places where no-one had ever successfully fanficced before, and he did it with panache. Many of the early chapters got him an award as comedy writer. Most of the stuff from the creation of Patronus 2.0 on deserve an award for excellent, compelling drama.

Though the series has really been having some Cerebus Syndrome here. The earlier chapters could make me breathless with laughter, and the Azkaban arc drew tears from my eyes, but the more we're advancing, the more dark and sad stuff is getting. Not sad as in Voices Of A Distant Star, "makes you cry" kind of sad, but sad as in "I don't give a fuck anymore, everyone sucks, why do I even bother" sad.

I especially object to this last chapter. What the heck was that? Why are the girls whom Hermione rescued from the bullies looking away from her. Why are the people who've known her for a whole year ostracizing her? What kind of bullshit is that? I mean, canon!Harry went through a lot of that in canon, but it never felt so stupidly radical.

That's all based on real psychological studies and similar examples in real life. Possibly in the author's own experience, I know personally that becoming politically or socially unviable is as good a reason as any for the vast majority of people who you'd think would remember any help you gave them to drop you like a sack of bricks. People in general tend to assign much more weight to the value associating with you may have in the short term future than the past or the long term.

Honestly I'm not really surprised very much, even if you ignore Quirrel's (quite accurate) rant on how villians seem to get absolute loyalty and heroes get fucked over at every turn, I tend to see things the same way as Harry does: If I expected average humans to act like rational people, I'd probably hate them.

I wonder if there is a trope for that, beyond It Sucks to Be the Chosen One.

Maybe All of the Other Reindeer?

edited 11th Apr '12 2:24:04 PM by Shinzen

Well, why would villains seem to get absolute loyalty and having everyone trip on each other trying to please them? Why would heroes be treated like shit? You'd expect the followers of a villain to be fighting him and each other for Klingon Promotion! And yeah, some people hate harboring debts and having to be grateful, and will grow complacent and insolent the more you spoil them. But others will work very hard indeed to get even. Also, being friends with Hermione has lots of benefits both short and long term: she's extremely helpful and generous, and you'd expect precisely the most selfish people to stick to her like leeches. Finally, political cost my ass: this works like the stock market: the person only loses value if everyone else thinks she does. If you want to stop a value from plummetting, you have to start by acting like it hasn't.

Anyway, no matter how much of a Slave to PR one is, people's opinions are not so easily swayed, precisely because they are irrational and once one has made up one's mind about someone, one is quite ready to ignore or Hand Wave evidence that one has ever been wrong, sometimes to an alarming degree.

edited 11th Apr '12 2:35:01 PM by TheHandle

Ok, maybe let's pool resources on who Amelia thinks the DP is.

• As per several statements EY would not Ass Pull a character this major. Therefore he's likely from Canon.
• Voldie has been jossed.
• the actual Quirrel is too young.
• Age: Born 1927, Between Generation Dumbledore (Doge, Grindelwald, Slughorn) and Generation Marauders.
  • That brings up Voldie's Slug Club friends, Avery, Lestrange (who's disqualified because of the House thing), Rosier (All Death-Eaters). Plus a truly massive bunch of Blacks (still an Most Ancient House). Oh, and Hagrid :3
  • Could also be a Canon character of unspecified age, "semi old-ish". Lockhart springs to mind, especially with his tall tales in Canon, and Harry asking the DP how many awesome things he had done. Thing that doesn't fit is Lockhart being a nobody (as per wikia) before becoming adept at memory charms, as opposed to being a scion of a noble house.
  • Other characters w/o an official age: Dung, Bagman (noble? smart?), Crouch (nope), Diggle who else?
• Slytherin: EY has adjusted Houses for Harry, Hermy, Neville (anyone else?), so that might be different from Canon.
• Scion of a Most Ancient House that has ended. Indicates Prewett Family, named Pureblood family w/ ties to the Weasleys & the Order. Ignatius Prewett happens to fit right into Generation Voldie, w/o any specific date being given. Also has no House given.

So far my money is on Prewett, produces least confusion.

Sorry, if not too coherent. State: exhausted & tired.

Edit: added Diggle.

edited 11th Apr '12 2:56:51 PM by Dirka

Keep in mind that this isn't just a little thing, this is "This person was arraigned by the High Court, and admitted to attempted murder under magical polygraph. The other guy also admitted she did it under magical polygraph. The guy everyone is terrified of got her off on a technicality." We are looking at it from Harry's perspective, he's both rational, and has an alternate theory which makes sense to him. He explained it himself a few chapters ago: False Memory Charm is the "I'm innocent I swear!" of the wizard world, it doesn't hold weight. And as their parents (who don't know Hermoine and in some cases have a vested interest in hating her), the media (who they believe to be beyond reproach and not Strawman News Media), and most of the rest of the world believes it, why should Harry's claim that she is innocent or her previous acts carry any weight? She's poison now, unless everyone in the world starts spontaneously believing something different. But nobody is going to be the first person to do so because of both the bystander effect and the fact that there is no benefit to doing so unless you know others will follow. It would be a Taboo Tradeoff actually, sacrificing actual social and political power for a sacred value. Hell, look at how fast everyone dropped Rita Skeeter after that paper thing, and murder is a bit more serious than fraud.

It's the same kind of thing as a Senator being indicted for an immoral crime he didn't commit. Even if he's proven innocent in court, his credibility is shot forever. There are numerous examples of this kind of thing in real life, hell, companies pay huge amounts of money to avoid bad PR for a reason.

I'd suggest a quick readthrough of the Politics is the Mind Killer and Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor sequences. They describe the effect pretty well.

edited 11th Apr '12 2:53:18 PM by Shinzen

Actually, the mere existence of that spell should render all testimonies worthless, Veritaserum or not, Occlumens or not.

To a rational or moral utilitarian lawmaker, yes. To a medieval one who can exploit the hell out of a system that allows it to his own benefit, not a chance.

And we already know the Wizengamot is #2 there.

That's all well and nice, but I don't understand why False Memory Charm wouldn't be a perfectly valid defense before the public, especially when the act just doesn't fit the alledged perp's known personality. There is such as thing as "establishing character" or whatever it's called they do in tribunals, where they ask about stuff unrelated to the case, just to show the jury what kind of person the defendant is. Or their competence, for that matter: why don't they ask Hermione to perform that spell she never learned? An Imperius would be an acceptable condition, if they think she refuses on purpose.

edited 11th Apr '12 3:54:26 PM by TheHandle

You're making a normalizing assumption, you're expecting them to look at it the same way you are.

To them, the way their system works is normal. It makes perfect sense. It's like a medieval peasant's belief in the divine right of kings - you can't apply modern sensibilities as an explanation of why they would think that way. Their court system might have completely different standards of evidence, if they have any at all. It's likely they don't have anywhere near as strenuous a system as Draco felt very confident he could get away with rape because his father had the votes. There is no 'jury' because that implies one's peers. This is a Supreme Court as the only court, it's the equivalent of having a trial in the Senate. Every single case is going to have political clout and ramifications because Politics is the Mind Killer, you have to support everything your side says regardless of the evidence and call your opponent evil no matter what. And the False Memory Charm works both ways, so it is useless, Draco said a long time ago that the courts err on the side of a False Memory Charm being used to help the defendant, so you can't use "I can't cast it" as a defence, because she could have Obliviated the knowledge of the spell from her own mind and the court would assume she had.

I suppose this is easier for me as I study history academically, and so must always be mindful of taking into account the differing mindset of the time instead of applying my own preconceptions. This is a world where people hide their personalities or true natures as a matter of survival, they have an inherent sense of hiddenness and separation from the Muggle world. It's probably instilled in the children from a young age (along with a sense of superiority for the purebloods) and they would adapt those teachings into their own sets of morals. It seems that in Slytherin at least, pretending to be nice or to be allied with someone you hate is an artform that is taught in private lessons. To someone who believes that, her previous actions could be easily explained away as a ruse. In this case her intelligence and clout works against her: in the same way Malfoys have no plausible deniability, nobody can argue she's not smart enough to pull that off.

You can't expect them to think like you do. With their entire peer group at that school it's not like you can recover from a bad political position - that's what Quirrel is saying, it's basically over for Hermoine in England now. This is every single person her age that exists in her country (of any import) who will now remember her for this. This is also the implied threat which hangs over all the other children if they aid her in any way.

edited 11th Apr '12 4:12:36 PM by Shinzen

Rage and screams to Shut Up should be the experience I should expect, huh?

If it weren't for Harry and the terrifying consequences of him becoming Dark, she'd GTFO, wouldn't she?

BTW, why is the canon so Brit-centric? We only get a passing glance at the rest of the world, and there seems to be no question of international intervention in the Wizarding Wars.

By the way, it's called the Minsitry of Magic... does that mean the Wizards acknowledge themselves as subjects of the Crown?

edited 11th Apr '12 4:18:51 PM by TheHandle

Today, on: Satire, That.

edited 11th Apr '12 4:16:52 PM by Shinzen

I've added some stuff.

Actually I hear that diplomats send their sons to specific schools to prepare them for that kind of behavior. They are reportedly the smoothest bastards you will ever meet: you never know where you stand with them, and they're the sort that will follow you into a revolving door and come out first.

Honestly, I'd expect anyone rich enough and with a modicrum of common sense to teach their kids to do that. It's an absolutely vital set of skills, regardless of what your goals may be.

edited 11th Apr '12 4:22:29 PM by TheHandle

So I see. I think the problem is that because Canon was written so Brit centric (as the author was a Brit) and the only references to other traditions are throwaway lines like Japanese Quidditch players ceremoniously immolating their brooms after a defeat, the only information we get about other magical cultures indicates that the ancient Egyptians cursed the crap out of the Pyramids, and France and eastern Germany have other wizarding schools but are culturally almost identical. And everybody else in the world is Neville Chamberlain to Voldemort's Hitler.

Functionally, nobody in canon gives a crap about any of the other countries, and they seem to let Britain sort out its own civil war.

If it wasn't for Harry's friendship and the debt she owes him, then yes I think Hermoine would GTFO.

I think they symbolically acknowledge the Crown in the same way the modern world does, as a figurehead. They do inform the Muggle Prime Minister about magic and the Ministry when he gets elected so there is some minor cross over.

Yes, but such a school or childhood where that training is commonplace is out of your or my experience.

edited 11th Apr '12 4:30:04 PM by Shinzen

I'd love to see Jim Hacker having to deal with wizards. That would be a hoot.

English woman writes throwback to the tales of childhood, where coins aren't decimal, everything is new and exciting and a teenage wizard is kept in a cupboard under the stairs by wicked step-parents. She cobbles together a system of magic from whatever looks plausible.

Years later, an AI researcher specialising in machine ethics writes a fanfic of this most unscientific series. And must deal with the hacked-together nature of the world, deconstructing the cruft while making it internally consistent behind the scenes.

You have my sympathy and the appreciation of every programmer who has confronted a legacy system,EY. *bows*

"Actually, the mere existence of that spell should render all testimonies worthless, Veritaserum or not, Occlumens or not."

Really? *All* testimonies? Completely worthless? Should they just abandon the idea of having trials for criminals then?

This was hyperbole on your part, or you just didn't think it through. The existence of that spell should just seriously *reduce* the value of testimonies, not eliminate it. Same way that photographic evidence is not completely worthless even after the invention of Photoshop.

"Well, why would villains seem to get absolute loyalty and having everyone trip on each other trying to please them?"

Because they will kill you if you are disloyal, obviously. Is this so hard to get?

Come now, compare any real-life dictator to any real-life democratically elected leader. Whether it's Obama or Bush you prefer, either of them was/is treated as shit during their rule compared to the worship and adoration heaped upon people like Saddam Hussein or Kim-Jong-il.