Vaniver comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: FAWS 04 April 2012 02:53AM

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Comment author: ArisKatsaris 04 April 2012 03:16:44AM * 10 points [-]

Story-logic would indicate that she is indeed innocent, and we as readers have evidence that someone has indeed been messing with her mind, but Harry doesn't know what we as readers know.

Harry's had 7 months to know that Hermione isn't a sociopath or a psychopath, that she's a very kind and moral and ethical person instead.

What's the prior probability he should therefore assign to this person, out of all of Hogwarts, to be the one to commit a cold-blooded murder on another 11-year-old kid? I think he's giving the hypothesis of her actual guilt pretty much all the weight that it deserves - effectively zero.

Comment author: Vaniver comment score below threshold [+] (9 children)

Comment author: David_Gerard 04 April 2012 07:55:36AM 6 points [-]

"effectively zero", meaning "so small as to be utterly negligible", is however.

Confusing the difference between utterly negligible non-zero probability and small non-zero probability that's enough to pay attention to is an annoying but common fallacy. There should be a name for it already, does anyone know what it is?

Comment author: Vaniver 04 April 2012 08:18:02AM * 9 points [-]

I'm having a hard time thinking of evidence that would be stronger than the evidence against Hermione. Even if Harry saw her hex Malfoy with his own eyes, I wouldn't put it past him to suspect he was memory charmed. It doesn't seem like Harry is seriously considering the possibility that Hermione is actually guilty. Can you think of evidence that would cause him to raise the probability, not even to 50%, but to 5%?

And why does Harry believe in the innocence of Hermione? Take the outside view. It is the first crush of a child. Natural selection did not spit out such a thing as pure innocents.

Comment author: Alex_Altair 04 April 2012 01:41:01PM * 2 points [-]

There could be multiple witnesses, Harry could have seen it himself, there could be indications of premeditated anger at Malfoy (older than what the court legilimens found), or some reason why she would be extra angry at him.

Comment author: Vaniver 04 April 2012 05:16:58PM * 4 points [-]

Okay.

Hermione knocks on the door of the Headmaster's office, while Harry and Dumbledore are having a chat. "I thought you'd like to know," she says, "I'm going to kill Draco Malfoy." She then turns around and leaves. Harry laughs nervously, but Dumbledore looks worried. "We probably ought to follow her."

They arrive at the trophy room just in time to see Hermione stun Malfoy and cast the blood-cooling charm on him. She turns around and sees Harry, and smiles. "Well, now you're safe, Harry."

The subsequent investigation reveals that, as a protest against Binn's teaching, she'd been submitting plans of ways to kill Malfoy as her homework for months now, and then stopped a week ago, with the last one involving the blood-cooling charm.

What's Harry's probability that Hermione was the hand behind the dagger? (Or, to put it another way, is there enough evidence out there that's stronger evidence for "Hermione did it of her own free will" than "Hermione was the pawn in someone else's game" that could put Harry up to even 5% probaiblity that Hermione did it herself?)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 April 2012 02:49:31AM 1 point [-]

If I remember correctly, one of the reasons Harry has a crush on her is that he's impressed by her moral good sense.

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 06 April 2012 05:34:50AM 0 points [-]

What crush? Can you link a passage that shows that EY means us to understand that Harry has a crush on anyone other than his Time Tuner and Quirrell?

Comment author: pedanterrific 06 April 2012 06:02:56AM 1 point [-]

What in the world are all these downvotes for?

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 06 April 2012 07:12:46AM * 1 point [-]

Rabid defenders of the H.M.S. Harmony, I'd guess. Some of them thought Harry and Hermione were married in 81 in a creepy D/s ceremony.

EY has attracted them because there's a ship tease or toy ship or whatever. And because maybe he's a bit of a Harmonizer himself, as he had said he couldn't get into the later books.

The downvotes are leaking away, though. So that's something.

Comment author: faul_sname 06 April 2012 10:28:08PM 0 points [-]

To be fair, there isn't much difference between the amount of evidence needed for 5% confidence and 50% confidence.

Vaniver comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong

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