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pjeby comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 5 - Less Wrong
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Actually, judging from his rant upon being awoken, his error was that he overestimated Harry. He thinks that someone as smart as Harry should have realized it would make no sense to kill the auror.
Essentially Q's error was simply the Usual Error, i.e., assuming that others think in a way similar to ourselves, and especially, that they will find our intentions or conclusions equally obvious. To Q, it was obvious that nobody would be dumb enough to kill the auror under those circumstances.
That's assuming Quirrel is telling the truth, though. If he didn't intend to kill him, why use the Killing Curse? If the goal really was to subdue, to dominate, this doesn't seem to be the logical approach: The battle was almost won at that point, surely using other attacking spells would have been almost as successful. I think real-life fights could be used as analogy: If you intend to subdue, not kill, in real life, you use a taser/pepper spray/whatever, not a gun.
Ever heard of a "warning shot"? ;-)
Seriously, though, you're not noticing that you're confused, here. For at least a week, a whole bunch of people here and on Fanfiction were going, "Wtf? Why is Quirrel holding the idiot ball?", precisely because it would be idiotic to kill the auror, unless Q's plan is considerably more complex than the story lets on.
In a way, we were suffering from Harry's Intent To Kill bias, and thereby overlooking the non-lethal strategic potential of having a spell that must be dodged, and thus can be used to put an opponent on the psychological defensive.
Bahry took all the non-lethal damage Q could dish out, and spat at the offered terms - but he took the AK threat seriously, and might have negotiated in preference to having to dodge a second AK -- especially if Q told him the first was just a warning shot.
It was clearly within Quirrelmort's power to subdue Bahry without escalating to the use of the killing curse. He wasn't even exerting himself during the duel; if he needed to position Bahry for some reason, he could simply have started to pursue and maneuver. Bahry was clearly already on the psychological defensive, and was being forced to dodge his attacks, so using the killing curse is redundant for those purposes. Bahry's own monologue notes that his magic was almost completely exhausted. He wouldn't have been able to hold out much longer anyway.
If Quirrelmort had been forced to maneuver Bahry out of the way of his own curse, it would show Bahry that he was not actually trying to kill him, which stands to lower Bahry's threat estimate of him and further galvanize his resistance, because Bahry will know Quirrelmort is committed to taking him alive. Bahry is certainly not going to decide to surrender because of Quirrelmort's willingness to kill him, since he's already been using potentially lethal spells, and he's already aware that he's outclassed. He's implicitly prepared to go down fighting. It's simply not clear how using the killing curse is useful in this situation.
When Quirrelmort used the killing curse, I noticed that I was confused, and after his explanation, I noticed that I was still confused. Quirrelmort's explanation simply doesn't add up.
On the other side, one doesn't usually say "So be it" before firing a warning shot.
True - Q's use is more akin to walking away from the bargaining table in a marketplace or a business negotiation. That is, it's intended to make the other side go, "no, wait, let's work something out". ;-)
I don't know what you think I'm confused about, if you elaborated on that, it would be helpful. I do know that I'm confused about the current events in the story. I don't know wether Quirrel lies, I just noted that your explanation doesn't make sense to me because it relies on Quirrel telling the truth, something we shouldn't take for granted, in my opinion. I can't offer a better explanation, though.
It doesn't rely on Quirrel telling the truth, it concludes that something (which Quirrel happened to say) is true.
This turns out to be an important distinction, at least in my own life. Trying to decide a priori whether someone is lying almost never works for me. (Paul Ekman, I'm not.) The answer always turns out to be "maybe," and I frequently end up biased by whether I like the person, whether I've caught them lying in the past, etc.
It works better for me to decide what I think is or might be true, regardless of who said it.
Q1: Did Quirrel try to kill Bahry? It seems dumb for him to do so... it achieves no goals I can think of that couldn't be achieved more easily, and it makes his stated goal of not being noticed far more difficult. So either (A) he was being dumb, (B) his actual goals are entirely opaque to me, or (C) he didn't try to kill Bahry.
Q2: Did Quirrel try to achieve some nonlethal goal using an AK, as he claimed? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me... like you, my intuition is there have to be better weapons for that purpose. So either (A) he was being dumb, (B) my intuition about Battle Magic is wrong and AK really is a sensible spell to feint with, or (C) he was trying to kill Bahry, see Q1.
I'm prepared to eliminate both A's on narrative grounds... the author seems committed to not having Quirrel do dumb things. Both B's are plausible, so my jury is still out... but I have more confidence in my intuitions about human goals than about Battle Magic, so if I have to choose I choose (Q1-False, Q2-True). But there's a lot of uncertainty there.
If this were reality, I could (eventually) reduce the uncertainty by researching Battle Magic -- is it ever tactically plausible to use an intentionally nonlethal AK as a forcing move? If not, then my tentative decision changes; if so, I hold it more strongly.
Of course, Harry does not have the time right now to consider that (or maybe he already knows enough to make it seem plausible, and the audience simply isn't privy to that).
Anyway, my primary point here is that it's often more useful for me to think about the events that happened and what seems a more plausible explanation, than to think about whether the person reporting them is lying or telling the truth. Accuracy is not reversed deception.
Interestingly, my intuition tells me that AK is perfectly sensible to feint with. It's like putting someone in check in chess - they have to get out of it by one of a very few limited ways. To not do so would be checkmate and the end of the game, much like dying is the end of the duel.
(And there are plenty of analogues in existing martial arts. In a taekwondo sparring match, I might execute a very strong roundhouse kick to the head, knowing that the other fellow will see it coming well in advance and that their only sensible reaction is to dodge it by stepping backwards and loosening their guard - giving me room to instantly follow up upon landing with a front snap kick.)
My first thought when reading that was rather skeptical. Stepping back and loosening one's guard in response to an attempted roundhouse kick to the head is far from the only sensible reaction and the defender is not the one left in the vulnerable position.
That said, you did say taekwondo match, and not actual combat. Most of the most effective responses to that move are forbidden in that game. Grappling to exploit the complete lack of stable balance is kind of a no no and incapacitating blows in the areas you leave wide open don't get you points because they aren't on the red dot.
Your point stands even though I prefer your chess analogy. Wizard duels with AK are not a game. Chess is, but at least it is up front about it. On the other hand the thing that allows the use of a strategic 'very strong roundhouse to the head' is the very thing that makes it different to a duel to the death with AK. Or AKs, for that matter - laying down 'covering fire' is another obvious illustration of the principle that relevant.
*cough* Oxymoronic! Roundhouses to the head are fun and they make you feel (and look!) badass but they are definitely not very strong.
It's the most sensible one. Assume closed cover and I'm kicking with the right leg. There are 4 directions to move. If he moves to my left, then I simply continue my kick and hit him. If he moves right, then he still gets hit but the kick might be a little weaker. If he moves back, then it'll be a clean miss. If he moves forward, then he's jamming himself as well as me and moving into a punch. If he blocks high, then he's exposed a good chunk of his chest. And so on. Of these moves, the best one is to move backwards and try to hit me with something when I land.
Yes, that is a very important point and why I specified taekwondo! In a match with grappling, assuming we're in closed cover, the best move would then be to block high, step forward between my legs, and simply sweep me backwards. (Alternately, block high and then do a push kick to knock me down even more spectacularly; but there might not be enough room to chamber your leg.) There would be more than enough time to do that before I could bring my leg back down.
I tried to offer multiple analogies so people could pick the one they like best. The idea of forcing via feints is a general one and so we should expect to see it frequently.
I disagree. In one tournament, I ran out of wind (aerobic endurance is my weakest point), my guard fell apart, my opponent won with 1 roundhouse to my head, and I walked away with a concussion. At least, I think that's what happened; my memory of the match is very hazy.
I think the general term here is "offensive pressure".
Reasoning by analogy is great, but at some point you have to be able to demonstrate sufficient isomorphism to justify the analogy.
What I'd be trying to determine by researching Battle Magic is precisely whether your analogies to chess and TKD hold. As opposed to, for example, the analogy Aharon used in the first place of taser vs. revolver.
Trivial example: if it's just as easy for a shield to block a "kill" spell as a "sleep" spell, then you can feint with a sleep spell just as effectively... whichever one hits me, I lose, so I have to dodge them both. In that world, your TKD analogy doesn't hold, and Quirrel's claim is unconvincing.
I don't know enough about the HPverse to know if the analogy holds there, nor am I sure Harry does, which is why I'm uncertain. (By contrast, I still have no firm idea what Quirrel is doing with the flask in Bella's cell, but I'm fairly sure that Harry has a firm idea that the audience simply hasn't been informed of.)
Right, not the case in HPverse - the killing curse is special because it's the only one that can't be blocked (though it's pretty vague what "can't be blocked" means)