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LucasSloan comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong
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Point in favor of this all being a plot by Quirrell to cause Harry to be more willing to overthrow the ministry:
ETA: Evidence this is the result of Quirrell's plotting at all:
Harry is naive. Why not assume that many people can be this non-empathetic? It's a useful quality to have, after all.
Because it also requires competence? I don't actually know what a world with many super-competent villains would look like, but I'm guessing 'Not like this'.
I'm trying to figure out what the heck that even means.
I sure hope Harry doesn't make a habit of deducing plot points - such as "Voldemort did it" here - from such vague moralipsychologising.
Harry's suggesting that Voldemort's tactics involve not just hate but an incredible degree of cynicism.
Both "Make Bella love you despairingly, on purpose" and "Mess with Hermione's brain intimately over a long period of time" reflect a person who can get to know people closely and accurately and yet not care about them at all.
A lot of evil comes from people doing bad things to people they don't bother to think about in the first place. Voldemort clearly took the trouble to get to know Bellatrix and (somewhat) Hermione rather well - solely for the purposes of undermining them.
Some police trained as hostage-situation snipers find they can't actually pull the trigger on real criminals, because they watch them so long and so closely they empathize with them. Draco Malfoy, in the fic, was coming to empathize with Hermione Granger.
Harry is observing that Voldemort seems to be immune to natural empathy, and that creeps him out.
(Agree that Harry having "Voldemort plot detection powers" as a general rule would be bizarre.)
Harry doesn't know whether whoever framed Hermione knew her closely or not. He knew that her mind was probably tampered with on several different occasions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the criminal interacted with her on a regular basis, or enough to empathize with her. Otherwise I think he would have considered Quirell as a lead suspect early on.
Good reply.
I'll note, however, that to me the word "evil" means what you're talking about. If we're talking about "evil' as a character trait, that is, someone being an evil person. When you say "A lot of evil comes from people doing bad things to people they don't bother to think about in the first place", I assume you're talking about "evil" as in "harm done", which is not the same thing.
Voldemort isn't the only empty one.
Quirell "cannot say that I bothered keeping count" of "how many different people" he is. Surely he has an empty persona. It's useful.
This also reminds of what he says to Hermione after she saves him from dementation. "The place where the dementor takes you there's no light. But you can't ever be happy, you can't even remember what it is that isn't there anymore." the second part sounds a lot like emptiness to me.