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NancyLebovitz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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This is honestly making me feel a bit aspie over here. As I understand the rules for social interaction, dropping a 12-year-old girl off the roof should generally be recognized as a misdeed. Hermione, as I was modeling her, was annoyed enough by having to climb the icy castle walls, and after falling off the roof, had gone beyond annoyance into a kind of detached curiosity. Bear in mind that she doesn't know anything about Harry's plans for Malfoy; so far as she knows, Harry is doing all of this for no other reason than to be annoying. I had trouble understanding wedifrid's reaction to Harry and hypothesized that he enjoyed empathizing with a dominant character and didn't want that dominant character to apologize, but now Nancy thinks Hermione is being unfair and, well. I feel a bit aspie because I don't quite understand where it's all coming from. Canon!Hermione in particular seems like she'd be really really annoyed with Harry making her climb up an icy wall and then getting her dropped off the roof. She'd forgive it in a flash as part of the war against Voldemort, but not if it was, say, part of a prank. What am I missing here?
Dropping a twelve year old girl off a roof is generally recognized as a bad idea in this world, but we don't have magic spells.
Hermione was enthusiastic about the war, and had asked to be dropped.
Since I might be a weird person myself, I've set up a poll about the plausibility of MOR Hermione.
Meanwhile, I recommend Jo Walton's Among Others, a fantasy novel with autobiographical elements about the coming of age of an intelligent, stubborn young woman. It won't be out till January, but I'll lend you my advance reading copy if you'll PM me your snail address.
Tentative theory: MOR Hermione is shaped by a combination of feminism and PUA, and the result is extremely odd. In any case, I find Harry, Draco, and McGonigle quite plausible, and I wonder if you've used different methods for creating them than you used for Hermione.
I know nothing about PUA except what I read in other people's blog comments, and this part honestly leaves me baffled. Wha? Amplify please?
My knowledge of PUA is almost entirely from the comments here, too. Part of what gets on my nerves about it is that it seems to have a model of relationships in which people are in them solely because of status and fertility markers. There's nothing I can see about people actually liking each other (or, for that matter, disliking each other), or not being completely fungible if a better deal comes along.
There's that bit where Harry explains Lily's choice completely in terms of status issues-- this suggests that PUA/evolutionary psychology at least seems like a plausible set of theories to you. It's possible that I'm conflating them as having more in common than they actually do.
It gets to me that Hermione seems to be thinking in terms of herself and Harry having a Relationship rather than focusing on what they actually are to each other-- I think she'd have better sense. Or maybe I just hope she would.
It's interesting that I've gotten upvoted and a couple of positive comments for my complaints about the most recent chapter, while still getting information which suggests that Hermione is generally seen as more plausible than I see her. I tentatively suggest that my suspension of disbelief is broken, while other people are seeing some specific implausibilities that don't bother them nearly as much.
One suggestion about the Ravenclaw girls' vote-- they may well be voting for the most entertaining drama for themselves rather than what's best for Hermione. This may have already occurred to you, considering that so many of them wanted to catch Harry.
In their case, more of them should have generalized from one example.
Here maybe I see (but also generalising from one example) why people like your comments but don't qutie agree with you. This is definitely what I'd expect from a 12-year old, at least in the society that I grew up in, which should be similar to Hermione's. (Come to think of it, this reminds me of my sibling at that age, although not myself.) But it's not what I would have hoped.
The fact that status influences our behaviours does not make them any less real. Nor does the fact that there are good evolutionarily explainable reasons for loyalty mean that loyalty is any less noble.
I agree that status influences our behavior. I don't agree that status is the only thing going on.
If you replaced "I don't agree that" with "I don't believe that" then it would avoid a misleading implication. ;)
I see that you made a claim that I didn't address, but I think you also missed what I was saying.
I haven't seen people who are into PUA make an explicit claim that there's nothing to relationships but status and fertility signaling. What I do see is talk about relationships as though there's nothing else. All I know about you folks is what you write, or at least how your text looks to me.
I believe I've pointed this out before, but at least some "PUA" training emphasizes personal development, emotional connection, and trust as the foundation for interaction and relationships. (The word "status" is not mentioned once on that page, and if I recall correctly, it is not mentioned in any of the videos being sold there either.)
Thanks for the link. I haven't seen that program before. I always enjoy absorbing things on 'Inner Game', essentially because the insights are usually applicable to life in general, completely aside from anything to do with mating.
Come to think of it the lessons are remarkably similar to those found in Alicorn's Luminosity that I've just been reading. I would go as far as to recommend Luminosity to people interested in gaining "PUA" kinds of qualities. The ability for self awareness and reflection, mastery over and cooperation with ones own emotions, the ability to know and actively seek ones own goals and the ability to empathise with how others are thinking are attractive traits regardless of gender and core features of 'inner game'.
You have, and thanks for the link.
The problem, as I see it, is that even that link still doesn't have any hint of wanting to be with a particular woman because of her individual qualities. It's more like "here are the traits any woman wants' and "apply those traits and women will want you and you won't go off-balance around them". It isn't creepy, but it's very impersonal so far as relationships are concerned.
It was interesting-- and new to me (you may have mentioned it, though)-- that in this version, the crucial thing wasn't status markers, it was moment-by-moment connection.
I was making almost the opposite point. You addressed a claim that I wouldn't make and I was distancing myself from it!
"You folks"? I am not and have never been a PUA of any kind! You are welcome to your stereotypes but please exclude me from them. :)
Do you remember where you saw writing that gives you this impression? I've seen PUAs talk a lot about status and fertility signals underlying relationships. I don't think that the consensus is that "there's nothing else," but I've seen some PUAs write stuff that could give that impression, such as Mystery.
Even Mystery gives some air time to things other than status and fertility signals. He discusses the creation of individual identities targeted to a smaller reference group of the kind of women you hope to attract. Mind you, even then he makes it quite clear that he "doesn't give a @#$% who you are underneath, just what identity you are going to construct and convey."
As I understand it, there are at least three separate things there: actual scientific evolutionary psychology; pop ev-psych, which is generally used as convenient rationalization for sexism and (less frequently) racism; and PUA, which is less science than engineering, but which comes with certain theories about why it works. I suspect that distinguishing the three properly probably requires a certain level of familiarity with the first one.
Early returns on the poll suggest that I was generalizing from one example. More people find Hermione plausible than not. Admittedly, it's a small sample, but I'm not expecting the results to reverse.