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NancyLebovitz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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I'm assuming that Harry had a background plan-- to get Draco and Hermione to cooperate, and to feel as though they are on each others' side on a gut level.
Even though the "drop me" scene is cute, I'm not convinced it's plausible behavior for Draco. I bet he hasn't had the Anglo/muggle training about not hurting girls, and learning that blood purity isn't true may not have affected his reflexes.
Harry's apology may be strategic. Or he may still be learning to navigate between empathy and rationality. Or (not an attractive hypothesis) tropes may be taking over some of the story.
ETA: Perhaps that should be empathy-signaling rather than just empathy.
So Eliezer fell prey to counterfactual muggling while writing that part?
Er, who says Draco's grabbing Hermione because she's a girl? He's grabbing her because she's falling off the roof.
Fair point. I jumped to a conclusion.
On the other hand, it isn't dangerous for her to fall. Draco grew up in the wizarding world. I'd expect him to have a gut-level trust in the potion.
Or is Hermione showing excessive trust in the potion because it's labeled as working a certain way, while Draco has more experience with magic that doesn't quite work?
"I bet he hasn't had the Anglo/muggle training about not hurting girls"
I agree. The "don't hurt females" meme and the idea of chivalry arise from the fact that men are physically stronger than women. But in the magical world, physical strength hardly matters in comparison to magical ability, which seems to be evenly distributed between the sexes. A witch would feel angry, or perhaps just confused, at being treated like porcelain. Granted, Hermione and Harry come from the muggle world, but Draco doesn't, and he shouldn't behave like he does.
Didn't it arise, at least partially, because power and legal rights belonged to men (by decree of Heaven) and therefore it was seen as the duty of men to protect women, as an item under the general heading of protecting the weak?
What did chivalry (ed: fixed) look like in cultures other than Medieval Europe?
You mean chivalry? Wikipedia says that the European Christians actually got it from Muslims, whose version was more extreme. This probably includes the doctrine of courtly love), which is the source of chivalrous ideals on the treatment of women.
In contrast, one website says the ideal wife of a Japanese samurai would also be a strong person, so perhaps bushido took the opposite attitude. (Internet searches on this turn up too much modern stuff for me to get any good idea.)
Yes, my typo; fixed.