Hmmm... contrary to what most people would say about themselves, I am nihilistic and generally do not care about the well being of people who I am not in regular contact with. I do have ideals which may work for the benefit of humankind, but this is mostly social conditioning and coincidence, there are just as many things I am attached to which have a net negative impact. Given that I have spent more time and money on video games than I have on saving lives, I would have a hard time classifying myself as a remotely good person.
However, I suspect that my interpretation of good is different than most humans. I don't really care if someone WANTS nobody to suffer, if you decide to go on a two thousand dollar vacation when you could easily have spent a day looking for efficient charities and made a donation, you have just demonstrated that your personal desires trump the continued existence of several human lives, or minimizing an existential risk. When I do things which are generally beneficial to humankind, I don't have to think very hard to discover a selfish motive for it, and when I see anyone else doing something good I generally follow the same thought process.
Haphazardly getting back on topic, Harries perception of Hermione seems extremely optimistic to me, and I don't think Quirrel would have a very hard time turning me to the dark side if it that meant actually fixing the flaws in the world at the expense of peoples trust and approval.
I don't that "good" exists outside of something that is important to humans. And for Goodness to be something that actually matters to humans, it needs to have a definition that is actually useful.
Sure, you can find a selfish motive for every "good" thing you do, even if that motive is "to make yourself feel better." But I think if the only reason you do something Good is to feel like a Good person... honestly, that's good enough for me.(As far as motivation goes anyway. To be an EFFECTIVE good person (i.e. "good at being...
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location). You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.
Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section). See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.
As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on. Time passes but your comment stays the same.
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: