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staticIP comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Hopefully albus's belief would be enough to bolster them even if they don't have a mind if their own. If they do have a mind of their own they can be threatened, and have been in the past.
Harry suggested himself that dementors don't really think. It might not be able to give a meaningful response, and even if it can, there's nothing to suggest that they can learn from the experience of other dementors or instinctively recognize Harry as anathema.
Regarding meaningful response:
It's already established that dementors can talk, but I tend to think of them like chatbots; they can exchange information in a limited domain, but get them out of the domain they usually operate, and while they'll still say things (like the dementor tellign Quirrell it would hunt him down,) it doesn't acually mean anything regarding its behavior, you're just projecting some sort of characteristic babble onto it.
True, but it doesn't have to actually communicate anything to its peers at azkaban. People just need to believe it did. It's obviously threatened in the middle of a court room, then starts flying to azkaban. Most people are going to presume that after something like that the dementors would leave Hermione alone. If they are consensus!dementors, not some-motive!dementors they'll still leave her alone, because people will believe they will leave her alone.
if they're some-motive!dementors, they'll leave her alone because they don't want to die. Either way he wins.
Even if the hypothesis that they don't really think, just behave in a way that people think they will, is true; it's phrased in such a way as to cause doubt in the purple-robes (the use of "just say yes or no" to make them think there's more information then they're getting) and belief in albus. If it just answers "yes" to the first question, it's still plausible within the purple robes belief sets, but hopefully makes harry seem mysterious enough that they believe the next question can also be a yes. Then albus, who's a true believer, pushes the consensus reality over to a yes with his understanding that harry has the power to destroy them.
My suspicion is that if Harry tried to get all high and commanding on a dementor, he wouldn't get a yes or no, but something like "Wretched child, I will come to know you when your soul fills my gullet." I don't think he has any reason to believe that a dementor would have any inclination to be cooperative with him.
Except that he already extorted them into backing down once.
You're right, I had forgotten about that. The fact that this dementor is in a hall full of Wizengamot members may make a difference though; its actions may be controlled more by their expectations than Harry's.
Of course - if Harry's right that they cater to expectations, then he can't threaten it successfully. If they actually are intelligent, he can.
(However, in that case, Harry is also a murderer. Whoops.)
A murderer of death? I think he'd be pleased by the compliment.
I'm not sure. He seems pretty appalled by the thought of killing even Voldemort, because causing death to an intelligent being is bad. I think he'd be very, very torn by the thought of killing an intelligent Dementor, even if they are a literal incarnation of Death, and would only do so if he thought it was necessary to end death.
That's why it needs to be phrased in such a way as to put them off guard. if they're consensus!dementors then hopefully that seed of doubt combined with McGonigal's and Albus's belief could tip the balance. I admit my own attempt to create doubt (by using "just say yes or no") was a bit amateurish. I'd imagine that dark!harry can do better. Intuitively it seems like all he'd have to do is create doubt in the non-believers and his true believers could carry it.
There's a lot of people in the room - several dozen, certainly. Three or four believers would not be sufficient - Harry's belief wasn't enough to outweigh a single half-dead crazy girl, so a 10:1 or 20:1 against ratio seems guaranteed to be ineffective.
Or it's about how well the belief is justified, not "strength" of the belief, or number of the believers. Crazy beliefs or those based on false assumptions would have no impact in that case. And justified true beliefs can't disagree (at their level of specificity).
Then how is it that Harry and Bellatrix had the experience with Dementors that they did? Harry's beliefs were well-justified, but he still had to KO Bellatrix before it worked.
And of course justified beliefs can disagree. As a purely trivial matter, true beliefs cannot disagree, so you are technically correct there, but well-justified beliefs can differ if the participants have different evidence. Sharing evidence will remove the disagreement(assuming that all evidence is in a mathematical form that cannot be disagreed upon, of course), but that isn't always possible.
Bellatrix truly believed she was doomed, that's a strong belief against harrys position. Harry himself didn't fully believe it either. I'd argue that the extent of bellatrixes disbelief was greater then the great halls, although it's hard to say. That coupled with the fact that harry wasn't a true believer leads to a consensus that they're not leaving. Now we have 2 true believer on harrys side and a bunch of people who probably don't have real strong opinions one way or the other.
Also, it's entirely possible that magical ability decides how many "votes" you get in the consensus!dementors actions. Albus has reason to very very strongly believe that the dementor will do as he's told. Whether that's enough to overwhelm the rest of the voters, who believe that the dementor will not do what harry says, but fear them and would certainly be thrown off gourd by the first question, is hard to say.
My hope is that is answers "yes" to the first question, enough to raise enough doubt that the second question can also be a yes. Once the second question has been answered in the mysterious yes manner, hopefully it confuses the expectations of the crowd enough to allow the dementor to be ordered about. You start with a question that can be answered innocuously enough, but changes the expectations enough. Then you keep doing that. Like murder gandhi.
Why does Albus have such a belief? He witnessed Harry kill a dementor, yes, but not control one.
That's not to say that he would disbelieve that Harry could do it, but I see no reason for him to have a reason to "very very strongly believe" it.