Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84

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4 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84

by FAWS

11th Apr 2012

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The next discussion thread is here.

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 — LessWrong

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jaimeastorga200014y90

Can somebody explain to me why Harry was so into House points before Azkaban recalibrated his sense of perspective? It makes sense why most people seek them; you take several dozen kids, split them up into different groups, and soon enough you hear them talking about how they can't let those Gryffindor jerkasses win the House Cup and so on. But it seems to me like you need to identify with your House to an unhealthy degree to take so much pleasure in earning points for it. Hermione obviously has that problem (cf. her speech about House Ravenclaw in ch. 34), but I would have expected Harry to avoid falling into such an obvious trap.

Note that Draco never seems interested in getting house points (as far as I can remember, anyways), so I guess his Slytherin education allowed him to see what the Ravenclaws missed: House Points are just one of those totally useless things you use to incentivize people into desired behaviors without having to give them any real, costly rewards. Like employee of the month awards, and military medals, and lesswrong kar-

...

Nevermind, I think I get it now.

(But seriously, karma at least has an individual tracking component that allows one to gain status in the community; is there anything about house points that would win Hermione or Harry more status than they would if they just kept getting good grades in class, answering questions correctly, and saving victims from bullies?)

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ArisKatsaris14y30

Who's the person who've deleted their account, and may I ask why? It's always sad/confusing when we lose someone and we can't even know the reason.

2ArisKatsaris14y

Hermione is less passionate about Ravenclaw than Harry is -- e.g. Hermione in January thinks that she should have gone to Gryffindor. Harry is very clear about wanting to go to Ravenclaw, and belonging to Ravenclaw. Either way it's clear that it's marked how many points each student gets -- Dumbledore in Hermione's trial mentions she has earned 103 points for Ravenclaw so far, and even in canon it seems to be known who cost them/won them points (e.g. in Harry Potter & the Philosopher's stone, the protagonists are ostracized at some point for costing Gryffindor 50 points each)

4Xachariah14y

In order to be an effective incentive system, house points would necessarily need to be awarded in social circumstances were other students can track them. And in practice that's usually how they're awarded. Points are given out in front of the class so all of the student's classmates can see them instead of privately. Some of this may be because teachers primarily interact with students in classes, but even private events which earn house points are announced publicly later. Functionally, in canon, the house point system physically updates as soon as anyone authorized says "10 points to Gryffindor." Since it's auto-updating I'd be surprised if they don't track the reasons why as well in a magic ledger or something. When teachers were in strong contention for the house cup, they would give out house points on the flimsiest excuses, but they'd always have a reason for it, which implies that it's tracked. Otherwise teachers would subtract 50 points because 'potter looks stupid' when they're alone in the lavatory instead of taking 10 points for backchat while in class to unfairly win the house cup.

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