PhilGoetz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 5 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: NihilCredo 02 November 2010 06:57PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 07 November 2010 09:46:14PM *  3 points [-]

On a related note,

If you think your own life is valuable enough that you're not willing to take on an eighty percent probability of dying in order to protect all the prisoners in Azkaban, his Slytherin side observed, there's no way you can justify taking a twenty percent risk to your life to save Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell. The math doesn't add up, you can't be assigning consistent utilities over outcomes here.

The logical side of him noted that Slytherin had just won the argument.

It seems the author is flat-out telling us that Harry is deliberately acting irrational, and commends him for it. Curious.

Comment author: Vaniver 08 November 2010 01:02:31AM *  2 points [-]

It seems the author is flat-out telling us that Harry is deliberately acting irrational, and commends him for it. Curious.

The math does add up, though: Quirrell is at least four times more important than all of Azkaban put together. It's like how, in my mind, at least 10% of the loss caused by the 16-40k guillotine deaths in the French Revolution is from the early death of Lavoisier.

It's pretty clear from the times it's come up that Harry's utilitarianism is either mistaken or too unnatural to actually guide his behavior- and so this just seems like more evidence of that.

Comment author: NihilCredo 08 November 2010 12:41:35AM 2 points [-]

Are you sure? In this fic, Slytherin isn't always bad.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 08 November 2010 12:12:19AM 0 points [-]

Perhaps the story will have a "Harry's fall from rationality" arc?

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