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Kutta comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong
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But hey, it's not primarily nerd wish fulfillment, it's a rationalist's glowing aura of awesome. It's winning in general, not winning despite being a nerd.
Harry's aura of awesome is not only due to his being a rationalist. He also survived Voldemort's attack, has a prophecy about him, and possesses "the killing spirit" - neither of which were caused by his rationality. Why not make him exceptionally strong and irresistibly handsome as well? Or something.
In Magical Britain, the halo effect actually works.
That sounds like it would work much better as a series of "In Magical Britain" jokes.
In Normal Britain, fundamental attribution is an error. In Magical Britain, all error can be attributed to someone's fundament!!
A lot of cognitive bias has tie-ins with "magical thinking". If you're living in a world where sympathetic magic works, why not the halo effect or gambler's fallacy?
The "killing spirit" thing is being depicted as ambiguous at best rather than necessarily a good thing. Recall also that when Harry goes back and watches himself defend Nevile, he concludes that there's something "very wrong with Harry Potter"
Oh, that's a necessary part of the dream. Every badass nerd must feel a little romantic remorse after gruesomely defeating the enemies. Once again, see Ender's Game, the perfect archetype of such fantasies.
Fair enough, except in the rememberall incident, it was made clear that alternate solutions were available. Harry screwed up, tried to solve the problem the wrong way, went for the spectacular spectacle rather than being willing to lose as a delaying tactic, as a way to stop the situation from going kablewey.
Perhaps the lesson here is that an attitude of winning at all costs is something that can lead someone to seek out real rationality, (as in 'something to protect') but is a bias and a handicap when you apply it to subproblems without keeping your sub-solutions within the proper scope.