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alex_zag_al comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong
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You are assuming that Parselmouthing gives snakes the ability to judge whether to fulfill a request based upon its feelings towards the one requesting. That's something social animals have been naturally selected for; snakes don't have that built in. That Parselmouthing causes snakes to consider requests doesn't seem less of an assumption to me than that Parselmouthing causes snakes to obey commands.
Every species that reproduces sexually needs at least a little bit of skill at socializing. And again, using the example of the Sorting Hat, we know that borrowed sentience closely resembles the sentience of the lender, so snakes don't even need to be good at socializing as long as humans are.
true, about the borrowed sentience - if it is gaining the ability to understand language, and especially if it can understand very social words like "teacher" that we know are representable in Parseltongue, is it really a stretch that it's borrowing human social cognition as well? I should have thought of that.