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thomblake comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Also, I don't think fire is prohibited, so did Harry warn everyone that they shouldn't try eliminating his bungee cords by burning them?
Unsurprising, and I don't see it as a problem.
Come on - Harry clearly manipulated that situation and needed to lose to make it work. Forcing Draco and Hermione to work together would not have worked nearly as well if they hadn't actually beaten them. Now Hermione doesn't think Draco is evil and irredeemable (especially since he tried to save her), and Draco was actually protecting a mudblood and then shut up and multiplied in order to win.
Wouldn't you like to know? I can think of three main categories of reasons:
I'm such a wrong person, I read that as "Draco made friends with a mudblood and then went forth and multiplied in order to win".
In light of the fanfic's famed/notorious length, this presents some disturbing implications...
Haha, I was just going to post the "Harry is Rand al'Thor" theory myself. Clearly the best explanation.
Followed closely by "Harry is Richard Rahl". :)
Unlike Rand al'Thor, though, Richard Rahl would definitely hit a girl.
If Harry is actually in love with Hermione, is apologizing his best move? Would he do better to show more respect for her intelligence?
Or is he apologizing for something other than setting things up so that it was likely that she'd be dropped?
The 'love' hypothesis was mostly motivated as an explanation in the case that Harry is not making his best move.
I'm pretty sure he's apologizing for a whole package of evil regardless of the dropping. I doubt Harry planned that that particular contingency would happen, and so I would also believe that he's genuinely remorseful that she actually fell.
I was bringing in Hermione's point of view as a possibly interesting part of the situation.
There is a genuinely interesting question here. I know I personally are far less likely to take the advice of or learn lessons from wusses. I am reasonably confident I am not generalising from one example here but for your part does Harry's wussiness have any bearing on how much you expect your own behaviour to be influenced by Harry's example in the MoR parables?
This is to what I referred when I said "some arbitrary social agenda" and that I could see as many reasons to orchestrate winning as losing. Deliberately losing isn't something that I find distasteful. In fact it would be impressive, a rare instance of Harry not doing something motivated primarily by his ego. (Did I say that already? Probably. It sounds like something I would say.)
Brilliant. And that is one of the reasons (apart from excessive braid tugging) that I stopped reading the Wheel of Time series. And this is despite the fact that the very name "Wedrifid" is from the character I created on the Wheel of Time mud who spent months of real time joining the Gaidin and eventually becoming a ridiculously powerful Warder.
That was a lot of fun. All that completely useless status I acquired in an utterly irrelevant social hierarchy! I still use the name 'Wedrifid' in online forums because the Wedrifid persona is more resilient and has a personality that is better adapted to the online discussion context. The "Cameron Taylor" identity works better with, you know, actual flesh and blood people.
Do you have a binary wuss or not a wuss model? If Harry makes himself unduly subordinate to Hermione, does that eliminate the effects of him taking on Dumbledore in regards to Snape?
No, but neither is it univariate. As with many words 'wuss' means rather a lot of different things depending on the context.
Let's leave the word 'wuss' aside for the moment, to look at the implications of those scenarios has on Harry's credibility. I'll also note that subordination isn't always wussy. Grand Viziers are subordinate and far from wussy. In fact, I just got back from playing board games - something that I am extremely good at and in which I make extensive use of subordination to further my goals. Humans are heavily biased towards dominance and I find that a useful trait to exploit. No, neither subordination nor apologies are something that are intrinsically 'wussy'.
But back to the question:
Being incompetent at achieving social objectives seems like a good reason for using 'genius scheming' instead of standard methods. The fact that he does this is one of the reasons that I sympathize with him as a character.