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NancyLebovitz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Not that Rowling did impeccable world-building, but is it possible to put together a plausible history of muggle influences on wizarding culture?
In the first place, I realise that you're probably going for an understatement, but I think it's worth noting that Rowling's world-building, in terms of thinking through consequences and implications, is actually atrocious rather than merely inferior. I'll never forget the moment when I realised that DISINTEGRATING LIVE KITTENS is standard spell practice for schoolchildren in the Potterverse, and no-one bats an eyelid. I sometimes ponder whether Rowling herself places an unnaturally low value on any form of life that can't speak a human language, or whether the themes evoked in the last books (that wizards are overdue to pay for their appalling record on non-human rights) are deliberately woven into the Potterverse at an extremely deep level.
That aside, could you give some examples of what you would consider such influences? Given that senior wizards in canon need to have guns explained to them, and that Muggle expert Arthur Weasley struggles to even pronounce "electricity", wizard obliviousness to Muggle society would seem to run so deep that I struggle to imagine one much influencing the other.
What's wrong with disintegrating kittens? They're not much different than chickens, and we slaughter a billion of those(literally) every week.
Also, if you didn't realize by book 7 that wizarding Britain is actually a pretty terrible place, you weren't paying much attention.
Wizarding Britain is a pretty terrible place - my contention is that I don't think Rowling realised how terrible it was when she was writing the books.
Actually, as an ethical vegetarian, I find plenty wrong with that too. But that's besides the point. The point is that, in our world, the slaughtering is still done
The average teenager does not kill animals unless they've been brought up on a farm or in a context in which certain species have been firmly categorised as pests/vermin in their minds. They especially do not kill animals they categorise as pets unless they are psychologically disturbed.
Here we have a classroom of average teenagers who unhesitatingly follow instructions to kill kittens, in spite of the fact that some of them have pet cats and that there is no higher purpose for doing so (the goal is apparently to be able to Vanish higher-level animals still). Not one of them is described as objecting or showing distress (which even Milgram's subjects did).
There is no way that any citizen of a modern democracy could have written the courtroom scene in Order of the Phoenix and thought well of the society that produced it. That's when I started to really see how rotten the country was. Similarly, look at the utter incompetence of the politicians - they're worse than ours, and that takes some doing. There's enough other examples scattered throughout that I cannot believe that they were placed there unconsciously.
And yes, slaughtering is done in slaughterhouses...because it's messy, smelly, and requires some pretty specialized sanitation measures. The average teenager doesn't assemble cars either, for similar reasons, but they wouldn't object to auto shop. You're right that the pet/food distinction exists, though it's not universal - horse, for example, has commonly been treated as both. The fact that they use cats is odd for the muggleborn, even if wizards put them into a different category(assuming that they do die).
And re Milgram, remember that they were zapping humans, not animals. Even most vegetarians I know feel there's a pretty important difference there.
I agree that the politicians are deliberately incompetent/immoral, but overall my perspective on Rowling's world-building is opposite to yours. There are so many gaping flaws and inconsistencies in the Potterverse as a whole that I have trouble believing that a specific minority is deliberate while all the others are accidental.
Also, Rowling isn't exactly subtle with her villains. With the possible exceptions of Snape and very late Draco, Potterverse evil is morally unambiguous and obvious to the reader. This inclines me to believe that if an act is in no way condemned within the text, explicitly or implicitly, this is because it is not intended to be seen as wrong.
You seem to imply that, if it could be done in a suitably clean and convenient fashion, the average teenager would happily slaughter their own cows, chickens, lambs etc. for dinner on a daily basis, without a preceding process of desensitisation (which the majority do not go through). I disagree.
Definitely, but I think it's quantitative rather than qualitative. A human's suffering might have 500 AU of emotional impact whereas a cat's has 50, but when an animal's pain or distress is obvious, there will still be emotional consequences for the one causing it (unless they have succeeded in fully objectifying the animal, the way a psychopath objectifies other humans).
World-building: Plot holes are a lot easier to make by mistake than atmosphere for the average author. Most of the "this place sucks" seems atmospheric to me - Rowling may not have thought as poorly of her world as I do, but I doubt she thinks it'd be a great place to live after the wonder wore off.
Unambiguous evil: I disagree entirely. Yes, the Death Eaters and Dementors are unambiguous, but Snape drove back and forth across that line so many times that it's ridiculous("possible", really?), Grindelwald was appealing enough to draw Dumbledore in, Hagrid was criminally stupid half the times we saw him(literally), Lockhart/Slughorn/every politician were some combination of pathetic and loathsome, Percy Weasley was an utter git and a massive enabler, and I could go on. Admittedly, most of those weren't big-E Evil, but they certainly did not lack for human flaws and ill consequences. Don't let the unambiguousness of Voldemort or Umbridge fool you.
Slaughter: It wasn't that long ago that's precisely what happened. And even today, I spent the last few days with the part of my family that's farmers, and all of them have been hunting since childhood. Perhaps that's "desensitization", but if so it's an utterly common sort in the right cultures. Death being locked away is a modern innovation, not the natural order of things.
Milgram: Yes, people react extremely poorly to animals suffering - sometimes worse than to humans suffering(which can be funny or just, depending, not necessarily simple torture). But Vanishing is not suffering, it's simply death, as odd as that sounds. That's a lot easier to handle when it's applied to animals.
Yet the "this place sucks" atmosphere doesn't actually kick in for real until Book 5, when the protagonist finds himself on the wrong side of the barricades for the first time (and also when Rowling leaves the teenage angst tap on). Until then, the dominant theme is that of a marvellous, whimsical magical world that's so dazzling with its uniqueness that you don't stop to question the holes and contradictions. It seems likely that touches such as Vanishing kittens are meant to be seen in this context rather than the negative one of the later books (which in any case focuses heavily on formal structures such as law, politics and media rather than day-to-day social practices).
That's exactly my point. Apart from Snape, the reader never has to stop and think "is this person good or bad?" Grindelwald is charming but proto-evil even in his youth (based on his views), Hagrid is unambiguously well-intentioned even at his stupidest, Lockhart and Slughorn are clearly low-grade evil (though at least by the time we get to Slughorn, Rowling is learning to make bad people slightly sympathetic), and Percy Weasley has no redeeming features until he actually gets redeemed. You never have to think in order to tell good from bad (apart from Snape). And this leads me to believe that if something is not portrayed as bad in the least, then you're not meant to think it is, because it seems foolish to save all your subtlety for details of world-building and use none in characterisation.
That's not relevant in this context, though. We're not dealing with people from cultures elsewhere in the world, or from a different time period. We're dealing with modern British children, some from Muggle society and some from wizard society, engaging in practices that contradict at least the norms of Muggle society and possibly the wizard one as well.
Yup, and that would certainly reduce the psychological impact of Vanishing Charm practice to some extent. Of course, there are also other spells practised on live animals that do not have this saving grace ("your pincushion still quivers in fear whenever somebody approaches it with a pin").
I find your impressions of good and evil rather amusing. Grindelwald is basically a utilitarian, something that most people are, he just doesn't do it very well. Slughorn was specifically introduced to be a good guy Slytherin, if a bit weaselly, so I disagree with you there as well. And Percy's a tool, but he's not actually evil, he's mostly just self-important and clueless - ditto Lockhart, for that matter. It's nowhere near as morally arguable as MoR, but it's hardly a world of cardboard either.
Re Vanishing, that's a fair point. But to counter - what do the kids get told about where the cats go? Regardless of the truth of the matter, if they're told "Oh, we just bring them back after class", then they'll be fine with it.
Lockhart mindwiped a bunch of people to steal credit for their good deeds. He ended up attempting to mindwipe Harry and Ron. He's evil.
Up to a few hundred years ago, almost all teenagers lived in a rural context and did just that. A big part of the world population still does.
The necessary desensitization occurred simply by growing up there - being aware of it and considering it to be a normal part of life. Maybe if normal young children (11yo) are placed in an environment where their peers, upperclassmen and instructors all do it and act like it's perfectly normal, then they'll get used to it in a couple of days and it'll be normal for them too. Why do you expect otherwise?
I agree that killing species preconceived of as pets rather than food, pests, etc. could require more desensitization for some children.
You seem to argue that the majority of teenagers would act in the way you suggest if it were a natural part of the culture they were brought up in. I agree.
However, I don't think we have evidence to believe that British wizarding culture is such. And even if it were, this would not account for why Muggleborn students (including pet cat owner Hermione) act no differently to their pureblood counterparts.
They routinely have children kill (vanish) animals in class to learn a spell. Their parents presumably did the same when they were in school. Isn't this pretty much the definition of it being a natural part of the culture?
As for Hermione, I agree with the interpretation "Rowling is a bad writer" over "she is making a subtle point here".
Circular argument, I think. "It's presently OK to kill animals in class, therefore it must have been the same in the past, therefore it must be part of the culture, therefore it's presently OK to kill animals in class".
Politics and litigation are almost totally incomprehensible to the average citizen. Therefore, it seems very plausible to me that Rowling thought she was depicting something analogous to what actually happens. Maybe not what happens frequently, but happens occasionally in a country the size of Magical Britain.
I think she's wrong to think her depictions were realistic, but that's a separate issue.
I don't know, Magical Britain is the size of a small town. It doesn't seem unreasonable that small towns with no higher authority to answer to would devolve into that.
If she intended that to be accurate, then she makes CSI look well-researched.
I think she intended it to be plausible. Weren't we just discussing what a terrible worldbuilder Rowling is?
It's an entirely plausible legal process...for a shitty country stuck in the Middle Ages. If she's so much as watched an episode of Matlock, she'd be aware of how far outside the realm of modern legal procedure it is.
Yes, understatement. I'm not sure what probability you should have attached.
They celebrate Christmas.
It's possible that they invented scrolls for themselves, but I'm not counting on it.
IIRC, they use the Roman alphabet, or at least I don't remember British muggle students having to learn a different alphabet.
Their spells show an influence from Latin.
Hogwarts resembles a British public school.
They speak English, even if words relating to technology and science are absent.
They use a train.
Faint memory: didn't they have a statue in plate armor?
Clothing.
Crockery.
Shelters, both portable and permanent (masonry, carpentry, and textile)
Prepared foods (despite divergence).
Eye glasses.
The custom of men shaving their faces
The custom of women being more likely than men to have long hair (not actually sure about this one for adults, but it seems to apply to the children)
Theater.
It is a difficult thing to make a complete list. Days later I'm sure I'll have twenty more if I didn't hear of a better puzzle.
Yup. For that matter, Sir Cadogan is fairly unambiguously described as a mounted knight.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how this project is to be reliably carried out without knowing what wizards could have invented for themselves - or, indeed, how far back the separation between the two societies goes historically. I'll give you the train, certainly, but on the other hand:
Early Christianity may have existed before Muggle and wizard societies separated. It may have had both wizard and Muggle worshippers (Rowling is silent on the matter of religion, but resurrection would be just as miraculous to wizards). For that matter, Jesus could have existed in the Potterverse, in which case odds of him being a wizard are extremely high.
The Muggle and wizard communities are tightly bound enough to maintain the same language (they share the same geographical territory, and intermarriage is not uncommon). Assuming that, at some point in the past, wizardry emerged from a Muggle population, there's no reason why the two should not share the same linguistic evolution.
Which suggests the existence of Roman wizards, supporting the above point.
Fair point. Although I struggle to come up with a mechanism by which nearly-modern Muggle teaching practices should come to be adopted by a school founded nearly a millennium earlier by wizarding purebloods, and maintained in a highly conservative fashion. If anything, one might speculate that British public schools are influenced by Hogwarts.
See above.
No contest. Ditto the printing press. I think our best bet may be to look at technologies which wizards would not have developed on their own (e.g. in that no other standard wizarding form of transport we know remotely resembles a train, or something which could evolve into a train). But that's a much more limited list.
Jesus in Potterverse, as a wizard who experimented with turning squib-disciples into wizards so he could eventually do the same with all muggles and be their king. His blood in wine-potions and flesh in bread-potions only gave the recipients as much magic as went into creating those body parts, allowing the occasional "miracle".
Decades after this story, Draco and his Science Eaters isolate and replicate the magic genes and start making potions that turn muggles and squibs into wizards (but also marks them in a way they can't see, for ... research, and to give them extra power), and use their huge army of new wizards and noble and blood purist allies everywhere to conquer the world. Hermione leads a resistance force of the best trained wizards alive to stop them. Harry discovers that Draco's mark sets in too soon before the transformation to wizard is complete, becoming fatal within a few years in ~90% of cases, which Draco considers an acceptable risk to become a wizard. And that it bends their will to Draco's. So Harry, the elite Bayesian Conspiracy, and the Chaos Legion, formed from anyone/anything else that would fight, fight to remove the mark, stop Hermione's people from killing new wizards before they've been freed and had a chance to choose their own actions, distribute a potion that doesn't fatally mark new wizards, and protect the new wizards without the mark, who are about as powerful as third-years.
The rise in wizard creation and deaths triggers the end of Jesus's stasis spell, and he analyzes the situation, gathers Harry, Hermione, and Draco together, and tells Harry to divide a third of his troops between Draco's and Hermione's armies, to make it fair. Hermione dies.
Upvoted for this part.
Thanks. The middle paragraph was far too predictable and mundane to exist without the proper punchline.
Wow, now I sorta want to write this... well, the first paragraph anyway. BIBLE/POTTER CROSSOVERS!
Early Christians did not have a tradition regarding a fat, bearded man commemorating the birth of their savior by giving gifts to good children.
Nor do we know that wizards have one. We know that people give each other presents at Christmas. We also know that there is a wizard explanation for the hanging of green and red decorations. Are there any other features of Muggle Christmas that show up in canon?
Decorated Christmas trees, mistletoe hanging from the ceiling... And the 'wizard explanation' for red and green is MoR-only, of course.
If it's not already in other fanfics by now, it will be soon.
Father Christmas, isn't it? Or Santa Claus. That's canon.
Is it? I can't remember. The only Santa Claus reference that springs to mind is the signature on the notes in MoR.
Personally, I think Eliezer keeping the train- qua train- is a mistake. It shows too much influence from the muggle universe. I mean, what did Hogwarts use as soon as 200 years ago? Why would they change it given their extremely conservative world-view? A Eberron-style lightning train would be more plausible.
Eliezer also has magical pop-top soda cans. I think he's just keeping it as random and nonsensical as canon, which to me accurately maps the way cultures bleed into one another.
Which spell would that be?
In one of the middle books, the Transfiguration class is practising Vanishing Charms on mice (I think). Hermione, being Hermione, progresses to practising on kittens by the end of the lesson.
In Book 7, it is explicitly stated that a Vanished object disappears from existence. I guess, strictly speaking "annihilating" is more accurate than "disintegrating".
Doesn't seem worse to me than dissecting mice as it was done in biology lessons at school not so long ago here. Well, for the vanishing charms of mice at least. For the kitten it sounds more scary to us who have cats as pets, but the "this is a pet that you can't kill"/"this is a farm animal that you can eat" categorization is very depend of culture.
I think we had frogs - once - and I opted out of that class. But I imagine those would be already-dead mice? You wouldn't have to kill them yourself?
Also, maybe it's just me, but I think that the more intelligent an animal is, the harder it is to objectify and kill. Stepping on insects is easier than killing mice because insects seem alien and thus easier to objectify. Killing mice is easier than killing cats or dogs because the behaviour of cats and dogs is closer to our own in complexity (or seems to be) and thus it is harder to dismiss them as "not really alive the way we are alive".
To be sure, the taboo on killing kittens is very much culture-dependent - but Hermione, who apparently has no problems with it, comes from "our" Anglo-Saxon culture. in which kittens are beloved household pets as well as common symbols of innocence and various other positive features. Which edges me towards "Rowling doesn't think" rather than "Rowling is very subtle in showing us the darkness of the Potterverse".
Until very recently, vivisection was also a staple of biology classes.
You could cut open a frog while it was still alive and watch its heart stop beating as it wished for the faculties necessary to cry for mercy.
Not that I think this was good class practice, but I rather doubt that frogs have the faculties to formalize such thoughts. The nearest equivalent in human terms would probably be something like
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!"
Almost downvoted for bringing me to the verge of tears. But I can't actually justify that downvote since you definitely added something to the conversation.
facepalm at reality
So the upside for Rowling is that Vanished animals presumably don't suffer (at least for more than an instant). The downside is that the children are practising killing for no higher purpose than to practise killing (in that if they just wanted to learn how to Vanish inanimate objects, they're much more easily available than animate ones).
So a teacher killed them all the day before and put them in the freezer. How is that better? We'd have to hire biology teachers who score lower on empathy than the cultural norm.
Experienced, (hopefully) emotionally stable adult with a full understanding of the purpose and benefits of the process, versus emotionally developing child with a narrower perspective.
Our culture has a firmly grounded principle that some experiences are traumatic for children but not necessarily for adults, such as sex and violence. It seems odd that it should apply to, say, video games, but not to hands-on animal killing.
I feel this point is less correct than your original one.
Is there evidence that sex or violence depicted in video games are traumatic to children (and not to adults)?
In cultures where real-life sex between children is or was the norm, is there evidence that it was often traumatic to them? (What is the definition of 'children' in this context? Pre-pubescent? What age?)
Finally, as for real-life violence, it often leads to (physical) trauma so if's obviously dangerously traumatic in at least that respect. But if we put that aside, what makes you suppose it's any more traumatic to children than to (average, not specially trained) adults?
You misunderstand. I'm not proposing that said principle is correct. I'm far from convinced that it is.
However, it is a foundation for our culture's treatment of children, and I find it dubious that it should be suspended for convenience's sake in cases such as this one, yet fiercely maintained elsewhere.
Hermione also has a pet cat, Crookshanks.
I think there's a point of philosophical contention here. I gather you're talking about Professor McGonagall's answer to the Ravenclaw Tower door?
The riddle is, "Where do vanished objects go?" to which she responds, "Into unbeing, which is to say, everything."
To me this implies that in canon "existence" is a predicate (common metaphysical opinion is that it isn't in the real world), which means that whilst vanished objects lose the property of existence they keep all their other properties and can be re-substantiated just by magically restoring their quality of existence. So killing someone leaves them existent but changes them irreversibly from alive to dead, whereas vanishing them changes them reversibly from real to not-real. This, of course, doesn't make sense, which is why not many people think existence really is a predicate.
The other thing is that on the occasions when we are explicitly told a Vanishing Charm is being used, it is being used on objects that one does not expect to want back (such as failed potions). This suggests that its purpose is to get rid of things permanently rather than suspend their existence temporarily.
Come to that, if Vanishing Charms worked as you propose, they would surely see much wider use in the books in the many instances when an object must be temporarily concealed from a searching enemy.
In canon we also see Bill Weasley use the spell on several parchments that look like building plans to Harry in order to stop Harry reading them: these turn out to be Order of the Phoenix business. So from that, it seems like vanishing probably doesn't destroy the target and does get used to hide things you don't want seen.
I actually can think of another example of vanishing being used in canon to hide an object from the enemy: there exist vanishing cabinets that will vanish you if you step inside and close the doors, and then re-conjure you inside the cabinet's twin, wherever it happens to be. These are useful as a means of escape in case of Death Eater attack. Notably, if the twin cabinet is non-functional you get stuck in a limbo that sounds very much like non-being.
Bill explicitly using the Vanishing Charm on valuable documents is stronger evidence for your interpretation than McGonagall's statement is for mine. I hereby change my belief.
(this weakens my original point, that of casual cruelty to animals in the Potterverse as a sign of poor world-building, but doesn't falsify it since we have plenty of other examples, especially from Transfiguration)
It is? That surprises me, given that the only other guaranteed fatal spell is an Unforgivable which the teacher has to fight to demonstrate or teach. (Also, I see nothing on the HP wikia about fatality, and it's usually good with the details; the article on Vanishing mentions multiple examples of non-fatal Vanishing-related things, and speculates that it is non-fatal. Perhaps the staff economize on expenses by re-conjuring all the animals back from Vanishment.)
...which is consistent with what I just said and does not improve your case. If McGonagall had meant 'they're dead', she could have said as much.
Wasn't that the Ravenclaw door asking a riddle? And anyway it says "Vanished objects", it would be a weird non-answer to say "they die".
So who knows what to make of the answer.
tl;dr: rumors that Rowling is a psychotic who wrote a Hogwarts in which students sadistically murder hundreds of kittens a year may be exaggerated.
considering the glass harry makes vanish in the zoo, maybe the kittens just reappear again a little while later.
Goes into non-being = ceases to exist = dies if previously alive. Possibly worse than that, since in canon the dead do not disappear but go on to an afterlife.
If I said to you "Bob has gone into non-being", is there even a slight chance that you would interpret this as "Bob has been temporarily teleported to another dimension" rather than a fancy way of saying "Bob has ceased to exist"?
I dunno. When you told me that a pane of glass went into non-being and it came back a little while later, and this sort of thing happens with all the other examples, what should I think?
We have no canon examples of a person using a Vanishing Charm to make something disappear and come back later. We have accidental magic (which does not appear to follow normal magic rules, as I note elsewhere), we have objects being Vanished and never seen again (including all the entries in the Wiki), and we have Vanishing Cabinets, which we have no reason to believe are the same thing as Vanishing Charms.
To assume that "a thing disappears by magic" = "use of Vanishing Charm" is as spurious as to assume "a thing gets killed by magic" = "use of Avada Kedavra".
Are you mixing up canon and MoR? There's no mention I can recall that Crouch-Moody needed any particular permission to demonstrate all three Unforgivables on the first day of class, and he never taught how to cast any of them.
Entirely possible! I thought Moody needed Ministry approval, but I no longer have the books to check.
Whoops, you're right, actually- but it seems to be standard procedure, it's not like he had to fight to have it done.
So he did violate normal operating procedure - I claim this as a moral victory!
Is that more satisfying than the normal kind?
In canon, Hermione (I think) notes that it is weird that illegal curses are being cast, but no one follows up - at all.
I'm not sure if Dumbledore realized at the time that it occurred.
Would wizards would react differently to disintegration of live snake hatchlings?
Probably not - Parseltongue is an extremely rare gift.
I specify speaking a human language, incidentally, because mandrakes act like humans to a limited but recognisable extent (they throw tantrums when young, become moody and secretive as teenagers, and attempt to move into each other's pots as young adults), but are still chopped up and used as potion reagents as soon as they achieve maturity. On the other hand, centaurs and goblins are at least recognised as intelligent beings with their own thoughts and feelings to be trampled over.
For those who haven't been keeping up with Eliezer's favorites list on ffnet: Mandragora.
Ooooh, and Tied for Last!
(well, that's just a Riddle/Granger ship fic, but very well done, WITHOUT time travel.)
Because the goblins have got a nation-level army, and everyone's gold in their vaults, and possession is nine points of the law and all of it in case of war. I don't know what the centaurs have, not having read that part of canon, but I predict they too are respected because they are feared.
Hell, would they react differently to disintegration of elves? For that matter, a good percentage of them were okay with mass murder of humans.
Yes. Elves are valuable and useful - recall Lucius nearly had a stroke when he realized he lost his House Elf. It'd be like casually shooting your stable's prime stallion.
Clearly you don't kill your own elves. You do it to somebody you don't like.
They might sue you for destruction of valuable property.
For that matter, a good percentage of humans have been OK with mass murder of humans.
The whole discussion is not very well grounded. Why make a big deal out of kittens but not of chickens etc?
It's possible that the kittens were Conjured, and thus due to fade away in time regardless of what happened to them. I'm not saying that's what it was, for all we know they had to be real for it to effectively practice Vanishing, but it is possible.