gjm comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Unnamed 14 January 2011 06:49AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (495)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: derefr 27 January 2011 10:45:48PM *  7 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: gjm 28 January 2011 11:09:20PM 5 points [-]

That must be the first time anyone has ever called Draco Malfoy a virtue ethicist. Probably the last, too.

Comment author: TobyBartels 29 January 2011 02:14:30AM *  5 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: gjm 29 January 2011 09:38:06AM 4 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: wedrifid 31 January 2011 07:30:26AM *  3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Desrtopa 31 January 2011 02:48:37AM 3 points [-]

(To me, canon!Voldemort doesn't seem like much of a virtue ethicist even in the relevantly expanded sense. More of a consequentialist.)

How so?