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DanArmak comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong
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Phoenix utility functions are not human-friendly; they do time discounting differently from us. It's not that rationality is hard, but that true rationality combined with human values like Harry's does not meet with phoenix approval.
The post-edit Harry decided he would do the phoenix-right thing later. Once he decided that, the phoenix went away, and will not return. If he had decided that firmly earlier, presumably the phoenix would not have come to him in the first place.
The pre-edit Harry struggled with a similar question. To be consistent, I agree that a phoenix could and should have come to him while he was struggling. But once he had made his decision, the phoenix would definitely not come. Those are the phoenix rules, as given by the update to this chapter.
The decision Harry had come to pre-update was that he would not do whatever it took to free the prisoners of Azkaban; and also that he would not do whatever it took to protect his friends and strike down evil, until he allowed another person to die through being ineffective. Those are not decisions a phoenix would approve of. (Which is not to say I don't approve of them.)
What are phoenixes trying to accomplish?
Do they have goals, or just drives? They're implied to be closer to animals than people.
In the same way (in HPMOR canon) Dementors are the projections/personifications of death pheonixes may be the personifications of courage or whatever.
[Maybe there's some sort of magical collective unconscious thing going on?]
Courage doesn't run on a model of "if you fail one test, you'll never get another chance".
Perhaps they are personifications of "The Call To Go On A Magical Quest Requiring Great Courage". But I admit it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
"Heroism" seems like a more succinct way of putting that, although it's a fairly specific sense of heroism.
"Heroism" has the same objection as does "Courage": You may get many chances to be heroic. "The Call etc" is a particular trope, and only occurs once per character.
"Campbellian heroism", perhaps. Though strictly speaking a Campbellian hero doesn't have to be a conventional hero -- the Thousand Faces/Hero's Journey pattern is more about growing into your potential than about saving people or defeating a specific Big Bad -- and both seem to be indicated here.
As I think I've said before, the specific construction of heroism that MoR is using seems to inherit a lot from Fate/stay night, and more specifically from the "Fate" and parts of the "Unlimited Blade Works" routes. The concept we're pointing to usually gets translated there as "superhero" or "hero of justice", but I'm not sure what the Japanese is, and in any case I've no idea if Nasu was using a conventional phrase or if he's using a specialization of a more general word the same way we are.
Maybe there's a limited supply of phoenixes and they just figure they can find better heroes if they keep trying out new people.
True, but death doesn't wear a cloak etc. The personifications of a concept don't necessarily have to model it perfectly,