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ArisKatsaris comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 - Less Wrong
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I sometimes feel like there's a fallacy that's similar to privileging the hypothesis, only in the moral domain. Hogwarts is full of people who'd find it awesome if Harry Potter gave them some of his personal attention. Before he was confined to Hogwarts, he could have gone out to visit all kinds of people who are in really horrible straits but would remember for the rest of their lives that The Boy Who Lived cared enough to stop over and take the day to talk to them.
We don't think Harry was "being a little jerk" because he didn't previously go to the effort of visiting those people. Why should we think that he's being jerkish when he's offered a similar chance and explicitly turns it down, when we didn't mind him implicitly turning down a thousand such chances before?
"Hogwarts is full of people who'd find it awesome if Harry Potter gave them some of his personal attention."
Harry has given lots of people his personal attention, which he justified by the fact it would help them -- Neville, whom he pranked, Padma Patil, whom he pranked, Gregory Goyle, whom he pranked, Lesath Lestrange who he pranked others for... Even his own past self he pranked.
So why not Hagrid? I don't see this really being about Harry time-budgeting, it's more about the fact that he can't be simply nice to people -- McGonnaggal would likely have achieved better results if she had asked Harry to devise an elaborate prank that would have dubiously potentially helped Hagrid in some ambiguous way.
Well, you've surely got that right.