buybuydandavis comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1221)
EY doesn't seem so fond of Rand, and it's like he's building her up as the great bugaboo of the story. That whole talk with Hermione was one of those "Gault Recruits a Striker" speeches.
If you live in a world where you are punished for what was called Good:
And rewarded for what was called Evil:
What should you do?
Voldemort Shrugged:
At that point, it's hard to complain. But I'm seeing Rand paired with Lord Foul. Consider Harry, Dumbledore, and Quirrell.
You get a lot of interesting passages just by searching for Hate.
A couple more that I recalled showing the difference between Harry answer and Quirrells. See the last in particular.
You should break up your quote blocks with an extra line so they look like separate quotes..
I find some of the most relatable parts of the story to be the vague hero-against-the world / morality allegory, particularly in the dialogue quoted here. I think as much of the micro-morality of the story is Randian in a way that as much of the surface dialogue might paint Rand as a negative colour (if only by showing how ugly her beliefs on the surface, but revealing their purer roots). Harry is basically saying "Yes, everyone is incompetent; woe that they didn't have the luck to be not, and let's try and change that without getting too annoyed". With greater intelligence comes greater ability (and in a sense perceived moral obligation) to restrain or make productive one's hatred towards that which can't be changed or that can't be changed easily. Harry is taking morality as being the extent to which a strength can compensate for weakness in the spirit of creating future strength. The Randian 'strike' is a utilitarian way to achieve Randian values, and not an inherently Randian way or whatever. I don't think it's immediately obvious Harry isn't aiming for Randian values, if perhaps narratively in a way that Ayn Rand would not have imagined - i.e. strength and weakness are much more complexly intertwined.
(It's not obvious either that I'm disagreeing with the parent post.)
Definitely. For me, EY hits some of the exact same buttons that Rand does, though maybe a little harder. In Rand's terms, the Sense of Life is the same. EY's money shots, Harry's internal dialogues, are practically interchangeable with the money shots in Anthem and We The Living, also internal dialogues of the main characters. It's a Nietzschean Yes! to life. I can't think of anyone more similar to either in that respect.
The same sense of life, but they part ways on ideological conclusions. Quirrell as the Big Bad, is busy giving the No Duty to others, free to be an Egoist speech. I don't think we're intended to sympathize. Then EY makes a package deal of an egoistic love of life and it' opposite - Despite, the contempt for life because of it's "imperfections". Reminds me of It's a Wonderful Life, where a different kind of package deal is used to recommend the squashing of George's youthful egoism.
Oops.
It's taken me three passes over the newest posts to figure out that you meant you sympathize with him. Upvoting for (delayed) chuckle.
Do you sympathize with Randian protagonists, too?
I doubt it. I'm not familiar with any Randian protagonists but if they act in accord to what I understand of Randian philosophical agenda then their attitude would be gratingly incompatible with my sympathy. From what I understand Randians are have their options artificially constrained in the direction of a particular interpretation of 'selfishness'. Quirrel can do whatever the heck he wants and care about whatever he wants. Doing whatever the heck he wants gets my sympathy and also a certain kind of trust.
I was thinking of Rand through this entire chapter too, but I dismissed that as a cached thought because of the recent "In Defense of Ayn Rand". Perhaps I shouldn't have.
I think the "I quit and did something more fun" bit was very Rand, the rest much less so.
EY has made it his life goal to creating an artificial intelligence that is friendly to humans. A mind that transcends us without hating us. Harry MUST triumph over Quirrel, and he must do so by being more moral, not more intelligent. Because if Harry wins by being smarter, then EY would be conceding that morality is a weakness, or at the very least that strength and strength alone will determine which AI will win. And there would always be that risk that the AI would "grow up" as Quirrel puts it, and realize that "the reason it is easy for you to forgive such fools and think well of them, Mr. Potter, is that you yourself have not been sorely hurt". And something tells me that EY's solution is not to create a being that can't be hurt.
My guess is that "The power that the dark lord knows not" is, in some way, a solution to this problem. Harry will triumph for the same reason EY's friendly AI will (supposedly) triumph. But we will see. I haven't read enough of EY's stuff on friendly AI to know for certain what his solution to the AI problem is, only that he thinks he has one.
That doesn't sound right. If you're looking for ways Harry could win, why not take Harry's advice and draw up a list of his relative advantages? He does have them - knowledge of superrationality, knowledge of science, ability to empathize with non-psychopaths, to name three - and they're likely to be part of the solution.
I'm pretty sure that he does believe that if an AI goes FOOM, it's going to win, period, moral or no. The idea that an AI would not simply be more preferable, but actually win over another AI on account of being more moral strikes me as, well, rather silly, and not at all in accordance with what I think Eliezer actually believes.
As of last week Eliezer didn't have any plans to include an allegory to FAI, and expected any such allegory to work very badly in story terms ("suck like a black hole").
For the reference of other readers
Oh. I feel a little silly now.