ArisKatsaris 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 05 April 2012 06:33:02AM *  3 points [-]

Which public response to 9/11 would that be?

Something like the following?

Harry had read the Daily Prophet that morning. The headline had been "MAD MUGGLEBORN TRIES TO END ANCIENT LINE" and the rest of the paper had been the same. When Harry was nine years old the IRA had blown up a British barracks, and he'd watched on TV as all the politicians contested to see who could be the most loudly outraged. And the thought had occurred to Harry - even then, before he'd known much about psychology - that it looked like everyone was competing to see who could be most angry, and nobody would've been allowed to suggest that anyone was being too angry, even if they'd just proposed the saturation nuclear bombing of Ireland. He'd been struck, even then, by an essential emptiness in the indignation of politicians - though he hadn't had the words to describe it, at that age - a sense that they were trying to score cheap points by hitting at the same safe target as everyone else.

As for the following:

And I disagree, it's not much of a marijuana allegory. Marijuana users aren't even accused of harming people.

It's not an Amanda Knox allegory either, then, as the person that Knox was accused of killing wasn't the last scion of an aristocratic house.

I think you're perhaps misusing the word "allegory" to mean "applicability", the thing that Tolkien also complained about in regards to people reading things into his work... Allegory pretty much demands pretty much everything to be a 1-to-1 mapping to something else, like the events and characters of Orwell's "Animal Farm". Applicability just means that you can apply the lessons of the story to real world events...

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 April 2012 02:52:58AM 0 points [-]

Was that an accurate description of the British reaction?