Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

The thing we have to remember for Avatar is that it is ultimately a kid's show. Yes it's amazing and we all like it, but in the end a show that's being marketed to 12 year olds can't have it's 12 year old main character deliberately decide to kill somebody, no matter how evil. HPMOR luckily does not have that problem.

I kinda chuckled at the thought of a mythical sapient creature, two magic practitioners, and a freaking baby feeling a disturbance in the force. XDDDD

I wasn't really that interested by this chapter. It somewhat serves a purpose of bringing home how high the stakes are - unknown adversary, can't save everyone, using desperate measures, big decision, yadda yadda. And it was good to recap the conspiracy stuff for those of us who haven't been keeping track. But it's a rather inefficient way of doing so. Consider that tangent about the limitless possibilities of the universe, which only exists to segue into Harry's question about what his distant descendants would think about him, which itself is only a small facet of the chapter's Big Question of what Harry should do as a superhero. Did you really need to spend two full pages on that?

If you want your story to ask "How should a hero act?" then you should be showing Harry and Co. acting like heroes. Have Harry have his internal dialogue while he's doing something else; he has a fine tradition of doing so and Talking Is a Free Action. If I wanted someone to *tell* me how a hero should act, I'd go read a philosophy textbook.

edited 17th Apr '12 9:52:40 PM by Aegeus

I thought the whole point was for him to decide on this stuff before hand so he doesn't have to worry about it in the middle of a fight.

Dragon Ball, Naruto, and a fine tradition of perfectly Western Fairy Tales say Hi.

^4chan's /co/ could probably come up with some European comic heroes who would,too.

You mean 12-ish children, killing, deliberately?

Anansi the Spider <- Web of Angels by John M Ford.

One day you and the rest of Less Wrong should make an index of Speculative Fiction works that you find worthy of attention, describe why they are worthy of attention, and possibly start a trope page for each one.

@Aegeus, I disagree.
I like how this scene was presented.

Harry gets a quiet moment to rest and he's using it to reflect on both his previous actions and to plan for his future actions.
Even if Talking Is a Free Action in this story, it would feel exceptionally out of place for him to have this calm, determined epiphany in the middle of an action scene.

This shows that our protagonist does indeed have the occasional downtime when his little world isn't exploding, and more importantly shows that he is human and that he does doubt himself. It also lets us follow his mental meanderings and tangents when there isn't a great threat or ridiculous time restraint looming over him.

I like the contrast of this quiet reflection. It fits.
In fact, I think this is actually one of my favorite chapters.

edited 18th Apr '12 8:09:48 AM by ArcanGenth

The original Anansi the Spider is a west african trickster spirit, the equivalent to Coyote or Raven or Fox or whoever from native American legends. He performed a few tasks for the god of the sky and was made Lord of All Stories. He has a slight Promethean bent in some tales where he is the one to teach man agriculture. He's basically the mythological equivalent of Dream of the Endless.

The symbolism of a spider in his web has other possible connotations as well.

Also, I admit Artistic Licence, but if he's quoting Emiya Shirou, quite a few causal arrows have been pointing backwards in time.

edited 18th Apr '12 10:06:09 AM by Shinzen

So. Dumbledore apparently never lies, not even when it's to a non-sentient object and he's in a mad hurry to prevent Voldemort from attacking more children. This puts a rather different complexion on his statements about Harry's father's rock. We know:

• It was Harry's father's.
• "I took this from the ruins of James and Lily's home in Godric's Hollow, where also I found you; and I have kept it from then until now, against the day when I could give it to you."
• It's not magical as far as Dumbledore knows.
• Dumbledore "can't think of a reason" why Harry should carry it around, but believes "it is wiser to do than not."
• "But it would have been terribly unwise to let you leave without your father's rock."

The obvious inference seems to be that Dumbledore knows there's a reason, but doesn't know what it is. Someone Dumbledore trusts told him it was important, or Dumbledore left himself a note before Obliviating himself, or Dumbledore has access to some mechanism that reveals "good things to do" without further explanation. I would find this last one unsatisfying from a meta standpoint—we have enough Because Destiny Said So already.

Some possibilities that occur:

• James and Lily were guarding the Philosopher's Stone, unbeknownst to Voldemort. After the home was destroyed, Dumbledore had to retrieve it, but didn't want to seem obvious, so he took a few other rocks as well. He then Obliviated away his knowledge of which one was the actual Stone, and has spent the intervening time hiding each of them in a different place with a different method, and occasionally rehiding each of them (per Flamel's insistence, all of them are currently in Hogwarts). Before talking to Harry, Dumbledore even went so far as to Obliviate away his knowledge of why he was giving the rock to him, but presumably got it back through Pensieve afterwards.
• Having a rock from that house is potentially useful for some spell that has effects going backwards in time. The laws of time require that Dumbledore not currently know this, or not know the details.

Or maybe Dumbledore is okay with Jesuitical deception and "can't think of a reason" means, say, "can't think of only one reason."

Ouch, the oversight.

When was it established that Dumbledore never lies?

It hasn't been stated explicitly, but he hacked into the Marauder's Map instead of just using the opening phrase 'I solemnly swear I am up to no good', and he's vague about Narcissa's death in a way that suggests that he's hesitant to just lie to Harry about it.

To be fair, I think "I solemnly swear" is the hack. Dumbledore just logged in normally. He has root access.

Thinking back I can't seem to recall any outright lies on his part. Even his rather clever note with the portkey never explicitly lies.

I'm wondering now how the Map came to be, and why (if it's an interface for the Hogwarts wards) Dumbledore had to get it from the twins, rather than just using the presumably-existent normal methods of access.

If you believe Dumbledore left the note, then he lied when he wrote "If Dumbledore saw a chance to possess one of the Deathly Hallows he would never allow it to escape his grasp."

Personally, I think he's willing to lie, he's just not willing to be obvious about it.

edited 18th Apr '12 5:54:22 PM by anotherblackhat

The more you mislead people with technical truths, the fewer falsehoods you have to keep track of. It's not unusual if Dumbledore is hesitant to lie outright when simple misdirection will suffice.

It's often said that the best lies contain elements of the truth, but I've always thought this was a faulty generalization. The best lies are those which accomplish your goals, ideally with a minimal risk of getting caught. But since people generally expect others to only say things which are mostly true, and only deviate from the truth in select ways, or mislead without technical falsehood, they will often fall into the pattern of analyzing what you say and wondering what they can infer given the assumption that it's almost true, or accurate From a Certain Point of View, leaving them vulnerable to complete whoppers that don't hint at the truth at all.

edited 18th Apr '12 5:57:14 PM by Desertopa

Dumbledore has a Deathly Hallow and he hasn't let it escape his grasp.

But he was willing to send Harry to the safehouse.

The Deathly Hallow in question wasn't the Invisibility Cloak, it was the Elder Wand, which Dumbledore intends to be buried holding.

It was just a little remark.

(Also, Dumbledore never truly possessed the Cloak, at least in the Cloak's opinion.)

I foresee semantic difficulties. For ease of discussion, I'll enumerate some possible behaviors;

1.) Not making statements one believes to be false.

2.) Not correcting someone who has a false belief.

3.) Allowing a false belief to persist, even when asked for clarification.

4.) Making statements with the intent to create a false belief.

5.) Making false statements with the intent to create a false belief.

Now personally, I believe that anything past 2 is lying, however there are those who wouldn't include 3, and those who wouldn't include 4. It's also situational - For many, lying at the poker table doesn't count. Likewise a stage magician or other performer might make false statements with the intent to deceive and yet still not be "lying" since they are in a social construct where such behavior is expected.

Dumbledore made statements with the intent of getting Harry to believe something that Dumbledore believed to be false. The fact that those statements were true is irrelevant, to me. In my opinion it's a lie because he willfully acted in a manor calculated to deceive. However, others may think of lying differently, so we should be cautious.

It's not hard to imagine Dumbledore having made a magical promise not to utter a false hood, and spending a ridiculous amount of effort to lie (by my definition) without doing so.

There's some academic discussion about this that I find interesting. Any verbal deception is based on subverting a convention of speech. The philosopher Paul Grice put together a decent list in this essay.

What we call a lie is a subversion of Grice's first convention, that whatever the speaker says is something the speaker believes to be true. Dumbledore generally subverts the third convention, that whatever the speaker says is relevant.