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NihilCredo comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong
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Which spell would that be?
In one of the middle books, the Transfiguration class is practising Vanishing Charms on mice (I think). Hermione, being Hermione, progresses to practising on kittens by the end of the lesson.
In Book 7, it is explicitly stated that a Vanished object disappears from existence. I guess, strictly speaking "annihilating" is more accurate than "disintegrating".
Doesn't seem worse to me than dissecting mice as it was done in biology lessons at school not so long ago here. Well, for the vanishing charms of mice at least. For the kitten it sounds more scary to us who have cats as pets, but the "this is a pet that you can't kill"/"this is a farm animal that you can eat" categorization is very depend of culture.
I think we had frogs - once - and I opted out of that class. But I imagine those would be already-dead mice? You wouldn't have to kill them yourself?
Also, maybe it's just me, but I think that the more intelligent an animal is, the harder it is to objectify and kill. Stepping on insects is easier than killing mice because insects seem alien and thus easier to objectify. Killing mice is easier than killing cats or dogs because the behaviour of cats and dogs is closer to our own in complexity (or seems to be) and thus it is harder to dismiss them as "not really alive the way we are alive".
To be sure, the taboo on killing kittens is very much culture-dependent - but Hermione, who apparently has no problems with it, comes from "our" Anglo-Saxon culture. in which kittens are beloved household pets as well as common symbols of innocence and various other positive features. Which edges me towards "Rowling doesn't think" rather than "Rowling is very subtle in showing us the darkness of the Potterverse".
Until very recently, vivisection was also a staple of biology classes.
You could cut open a frog while it was still alive and watch its heart stop beating as it wished for the faculties necessary to cry for mercy.
Not that I think this was good class practice, but I rather doubt that frogs have the faculties to formalize such thoughts. The nearest equivalent in human terms would probably be something like
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!"
Almost downvoted for bringing me to the verge of tears. But I can't actually justify that downvote since you definitely added something to the conversation.
facepalm at reality
So the upside for Rowling is that Vanished animals presumably don't suffer (at least for more than an instant). The downside is that the children are practising killing for no higher purpose than to practise killing (in that if they just wanted to learn how to Vanish inanimate objects, they're much more easily available than animate ones).
So a teacher killed them all the day before and put them in the freezer. How is that better? We'd have to hire biology teachers who score lower on empathy than the cultural norm.
Experienced, (hopefully) emotionally stable adult with a full understanding of the purpose and benefits of the process, versus emotionally developing child with a narrower perspective.
Our culture has a firmly grounded principle that some experiences are traumatic for children but not necessarily for adults, such as sex and violence. It seems odd that it should apply to, say, video games, but not to hands-on animal killing.
I feel this point is less correct than your original one.
Is there evidence that sex or violence depicted in video games are traumatic to children (and not to adults)?
In cultures where real-life sex between children is or was the norm, is there evidence that it was often traumatic to them? (What is the definition of 'children' in this context? Pre-pubescent? What age?)
Finally, as for real-life violence, it often leads to (physical) trauma so if's obviously dangerously traumatic in at least that respect. But if we put that aside, what makes you suppose it's any more traumatic to children than to (average, not specially trained) adults?
You misunderstand. I'm not proposing that said principle is correct. I'm far from convinced that it is.
However, it is a foundation for our culture's treatment of children, and I find it dubious that it should be suspended for convenience's sake in cases such as this one, yet fiercely maintained elsewhere.
It appears, however, that this principle is not aligned with the magical culture's approved treatment with children.
If we allow examples from MoR, we have Draco not having any moral problems with raping another child, and most of the Hogwarts faculty and students see nothing wrong with physically violent bullying between students. In canon, I understand that Harry tested out unknown (potentially deadly) curses on random (stranger) Slytherin children (instead of, say, kittens), and wasn't told off by anyone. Etc etc.
In our world, where it is against cultural norms, posters in this thread report that dissecting live (and recently killed) animals in class has indeed been diminishing. (Personal anecdata: I was in highschool in Israel 10-15 years ago and we witnessed a dissection of a single dead frog for the entire class, and only once.)
As initially presented, Draco's habits of moral thinking — I wouldn't say "principles" — seem to have been trained to the expectation that might makes right; and that doing something that you want to do, and that can't be held against you, can't be sensibly objected to. Draco is probably not typical.
This was, until relatively recently, a pretty typical attitude in the real world.
Hermione also has a pet cat, Crookshanks.
I think there's a point of philosophical contention here. I gather you're talking about Professor McGonagall's answer to the Ravenclaw Tower door?
The riddle is, "Where do vanished objects go?" to which she responds, "Into unbeing, which is to say, everything."
To me this implies that in canon "existence" is a predicate (common metaphysical opinion is that it isn't in the real world), which means that whilst vanished objects lose the property of existence they keep all their other properties and can be re-substantiated just by magically restoring their quality of existence. So killing someone leaves them existent but changes them irreversibly from alive to dead, whereas vanishing them changes them reversibly from real to not-real. This, of course, doesn't make sense, which is why not many people think existence really is a predicate.
The other thing is that on the occasions when we are explicitly told a Vanishing Charm is being used, it is being used on objects that one does not expect to want back (such as failed potions). This suggests that its purpose is to get rid of things permanently rather than suspend their existence temporarily.
Come to that, if Vanishing Charms worked as you propose, they would surely see much wider use in the books in the many instances when an object must be temporarily concealed from a searching enemy.
In canon we also see Bill Weasley use the spell on several parchments that look like building plans to Harry in order to stop Harry reading them: these turn out to be Order of the Phoenix business. So from that, it seems like vanishing probably doesn't destroy the target and does get used to hide things you don't want seen.
I actually can think of another example of vanishing being used in canon to hide an object from the enemy: there exist vanishing cabinets that will vanish you if you step inside and close the doors, and then re-conjure you inside the cabinet's twin, wherever it happens to be. These are useful as a means of escape in case of Death Eater attack. Notably, if the twin cabinet is non-functional you get stuck in a limbo that sounds very much like non-being.
Bill explicitly using the Vanishing Charm on valuable documents is stronger evidence for your interpretation than McGonagall's statement is for mine. I hereby change my belief.
(this weakens my original point, that of casual cruelty to animals in the Potterverse as a sign of poor world-building, but doesn't falsify it since we have plenty of other examples, especially from Transfiguration)
It is? That surprises me, given that the only other guaranteed fatal spell is an Unforgivable which the teacher has to fight to demonstrate or teach. (Also, I see nothing on the HP wikia about fatality, and it's usually good with the details; the article on Vanishing mentions multiple examples of non-fatal Vanishing-related things, and speculates that it is non-fatal. Perhaps the staff economize on expenses by re-conjuring all the animals back from Vanishment.)
...which is consistent with what I just said and does not improve your case. If McGonagall had meant 'they're dead', she could have said as much.
Wasn't that the Ravenclaw door asking a riddle? And anyway it says "Vanished objects", it would be a weird non-answer to say "they die".
So who knows what to make of the answer.
tl;dr: rumors that Rowling is a psychotic who wrote a Hogwarts in which students sadistically murder hundreds of kittens a year may be exaggerated.
considering the glass harry makes vanish in the zoo, maybe the kittens just reappear again a little while later.
Except accidental magic use in the Potterverse ignores all known rules of magic. It has young children manage things that aren't possible without extensive study and a wand. But even ignoring this, the facts that accidental magic stops when a child starts learning spellcasting, even in circumstances where it would save their life, and that children stop being able to perform wandless magic without super-advanced training, suggest it's not properly integrated into the rest of the setting.
Goes into non-being = ceases to exist = dies if previously alive. Possibly worse than that, since in canon the dead do not disappear but go on to an afterlife.
If I said to you "Bob has gone into non-being", is there even a slight chance that you would interpret this as "Bob has been temporarily teleported to another dimension" rather than a fancy way of saying "Bob has ceased to exist"?
I dunno. When you told me that a pane of glass went into non-being and it came back a little while later, and this sort of thing happens with all the other examples, what should I think?
We have no canon examples of a person using a Vanishing Charm to make something disappear and come back later. We have accidental magic (which does not appear to follow normal magic rules, as I note elsewhere), we have objects being Vanished and never seen again (including all the entries in the Wiki), and we have Vanishing Cabinets, which we have no reason to believe are the same thing as Vanishing Charms.
To assume that "a thing disappears by magic" = "use of Vanishing Charm" is as spurious as to assume "a thing gets killed by magic" = "use of Avada Kedavra".
We don't have canon examples of a lot of things.
Which is more likely, that the Vanished animals follow the trends already observed for all the related magics, or that Rowling makes an exception for the animals and Hogwarts is a charnelhouse?
But we have an explicit canon statement by a recognised authority in the spell school in question. That should trump guesses based on inferred similarities between different instances of different spells.
Given that
1) the trends you cite are only there if we assume that every instance of something disappearing uses identical magical mechanisms to the Vanishing Charm
and
2) Rowling appears to have no conception of non-sentients' rights whatsoever (cf. Transfiguring hedgehogs into pincushions, some of which still quiver in fear when faced with pins)
I believe the balance of evidence favours the "charnelhouse" claim. To clarify, I don't believe that Rowling makes an exception for the animals: whatever magical effects apply elsewhere, the specific spell known as the Vanishing Charm is intended to make its target enter "non-being" and permanently disappear.
Are you mixing up canon and MoR? There's no mention I can recall that Crouch-Moody needed any particular permission to demonstrate all three Unforgivables on the first day of class, and he never taught how to cast any of them.
Entirely possible! I thought Moody needed Ministry approval, but I no longer have the books to check.
Whoops, you're right, actually- but it seems to be standard procedure, it's not like he had to fight to have it done.
So he did violate normal operating procedure - I claim this as a moral victory!
Is that more satisfying than the normal kind?
As long as I don't try to eat it or make use of it in any way.
No, but it's a lot easier to accomplish.
In canon, Hermione (I think) notes that it is weird that illegal curses are being cast, but no one follows up - at all.
I'm not sure if Dumbledore realized at the time that it occurred.