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wedrifid comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong
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Comments (495)
ch68:
Hermione is very much correct. If she wants to play the hero, she needs to level up.
Hermione Skills- photographic memory, high intelligence, fast learner, high level of spell casting ability. No Patronus capability (although her minions might) Minions - several capable Sunshine luitenents, Ms. McGonigal (not very forthcoming with aid) Magic items - magic bag of holding
Harry Skills - high intelligence. Natural Occlumens. Patronus 2.0 capability. Partial Transfiguration capability. Rational thinking and scientific methods. Highly intuitive with lateral thinking. Knowledge of various Muggle technologies. Parseltongue language Minions/Allies - Chaos Lieutenant Longbottom, Lesath Lestrange, Bella Lestrange, Prof. Quirrell, Prof. Dumbeldor (not very forthcoming with aid), Prof. McGonagal (somewhat forthcoming with aid), Fawkes (?), Santa (?) Magic / Items - Deathly Hallow Cloak, Time Turner, Wealth (limited access), Chest of holding, Bag of holding, various Muggle tech artifacts (batteries, arc welder, ...)
Draco Skills – high intelligence. Patronus. Learning rational thinking and scientific methods. Trained manipulator.
Minions / Allies – Lucius Malfoy, Prof. Snape, Prof. Quirrell, Dragon Lieutenant Crab and Goyle (martial artist and skilled flyer), Slytherin network, Magic / Items – Wealth
Hermione should focus on improving her skill set. Researching into higher level spells and using her current spells in novel ways. Maybe she should read Harry's note to try and gain Patronus 2.0 capability.
She should acquire more allies and minions. Acquire a familiar (the bigger and badder the better...like a Fawkes or Naga equivalent). Get more effort out of her Luitenants and use thier resources. Maybe go the canon route and develop the House Elfs as allies. She should lobby for advanced classes and befriend higher year students as well.
She should actively seek to aquire or enchant some magic items to enhance her combat capabilities. Lieutenant Wesley should really be brought to task with acquiring some Zonko product from his brothers for the war effort.
I like this strategizing. I'd actually like to see a Hermione and the Methods of Rationality spinoff. Like the HP one only with less of Harry confusing clever and arrogant with rational (unless Harry has changed his personality in the last 20 or so chapters since I tired of him).
Of course, with all Hermione's leveling up she still will not have a:
Neville is badass.
Very true. But hey, you know who Hermione does have, in her Allies column?
Harry Potter.
She should get Harry's help with her heroine project. He certainly wouldn't try to hold her back like Dumbledore and McGonagall. The only difficulty would be explaining her problem to him in a way that he could understand -- but once he did understand it, he'd want to help and he'd probably be good at it, too.
Harry doesn't exactly strike me as psychologically prepared for this particular revelation.
He's quite prepared in a Hero's Journey sense, though. In Harry's own mind, he has lost his mentor. Thus, he is now free to be a mentor. And what better way to grow, as a Hero and über-rationalist, than to teach others to do what you do?
Of course, Harry would say that he's already doing that with Draco—but in the same way that he usually holds back his near-mode instrumental-rationalist dark side, he's holding back the kind of insights that Draco would need to think the way Harry thinks; Harry is training Draco to be a scientist, but not an instrumental rationalist, and therefore, in the context of the story, not a Hero. (To put it another way: Draco will never one-box. He's a virtue-ethicist who is more concerned with "rationality" as just another virtue than with winning per se.)
Mentoring Hermione would be an entirely different matter: he would basically have to instill a dark side into her. Quirrel taught Harry how to lose—Harry would have to teach Hermione how to win.
If Eliezer has planned MoR as a five-act heroic fantasy, it will probably go like this; usually, in a five-act form, acts 4 and 5 mirror the character developments of the Hero in 2 and 3 in another character, for the purposes of re-examining the (developed, and now mostly stagnant) Hero's growth and revealing by juxtaposition what using that particular character as Hero brought to the journey.
It seems more likely to be a three-act form at this point, though, with Azkaban as the central, act 2 ordeal. That's not to say the story is more than half-over already, though; Harry has just found his motivation for acting instead of reacting (to change the magical world such that Azkaban is no longer a part of it.)
That must be the first time anyone has ever called Draco Malfoy a virtue ethicist. Probably the last, too.
Just because his values don't match yours doesn't mean that he's not ethical.
Whether for good or evil, evarybody in canon is a virtue ethicist. (Presumably because Rowling knows no other ethics.)
For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't disagreeing that one could categorize Draco that way. I just thought the incongruity of it was striking.
(To me, canon!Voldemort doesn't seem like much of a virtue ethicist even in the relevantly expanded sense. More of a consequentialist.)
I had the same impression. I think it was Eliezer's-characaturization-of-canon!Voldemort that was the virtue ethicist. Voldemort harnessed, encouraged and exploited a form of virtue ethics in others to reinforce his own power. Tom Riddle was perhaps more of a virtue ethicist. As they say, power corrupts - it even corrupts away virtue systems that were fairly abominable to begin with.
I did upvote the grandparent despite this possible exception.
How so?
Hermione knows how to win. She won the first mock battle quite resoundingly. She doesn't necessarily know how to hurt people for the greater good though.
I hope it plays out like this, at least in part. The bits early in the book with Harry teaching Draco were fun.
Draco may have already had the instrumental rationality part; certainly he was on a higher level instrumentally than epistemically. He had already had tutors in influencing people, he didn't have an akrasia problem, and he grew up in a culture of "find out what you want and go get it". Also, did you mean "Draco will never one-box?"
Er, yes, edited.
Well, he's had some lessons to clarify the difference between clever arrogance and rationality within some of those chapters.