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pedanterrific comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: FAWS 11 April 2012 03:39AM

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Comment author: pedanterrific 12 April 2012 04:37:42PM *  10 points [-]

Obvioussly you will ssee persson pretending to be healer on arrival!

Is... is it not possible to lie in Parseltongue? I mean, we have

"I am not regisstered," hissed the snake. The dark pits of its eyes stared at Harry. "Animaguss musst be regisstered. Penalty is two yearss imprissonment. Will you keep my ssecret, boy?"

"Yess," hissed Harry. "Would never break promisse."

The snake seemed to hold still, as though in shock, and then began to sway again.

and

You ssay nothing, to no one. Give no ssign of expectancy, none. Undersstand?"

Harry nodded.

"Ansswer in sspeech."

"Yess."

"Will do as I ssaid?"

"Yess.

Comment author: Alsadius 13 April 2012 03:20:52AM 1 point [-]

1) Harry explicitly says earlier that he'd say he could be trusted with a secret, even if he couldn't be, because it was never helpful to be ignorant of it. I think his statement there is actually a known lie(albeit not by much, given that he seems to consider Quirrell his third father). 2) I think he was just trying to make things very clear - forcing people to actively say something instead of just passively accepting is an effective way of gauging them.

Comment author: pedanterrific 13 April 2012 03:27:24AM 3 points [-]

Harry explicitly says earlier that he'd say he could be trusted with a secret, even if he couldn't be, because it was never helpful to be ignorant of it.

I'm going to need a direct quote. The only thing I can think of similar to this is

"All right," Harry said slowly. It was hard to see how having a conversation and being unable to tell anyone could be more constraining than not having it, in which case you also couldn't tell anyone the contents. "I promise."

Not to mention

A secret whose revelation could prove so disastrous that I must ask you to swear - and I do require you to swear it seriously, Harry, whatever you may think of all this - never to tell anyone or anything else."

Harry considered his mother's fifth-year Potions textbook, which, apparently, held a terrible secret.

The problem was that Harry did take that oaths like that very seriously. Any vow was an Unbreakable Vow if made by the right sort of person.

Comment author: Alsadius 13 April 2012 04:02:03AM 1 point [-]

The first of those was what I was referring to. Apparently it's phrased a bit more softly than I remember, though it certainly displays that mindset. And all the second one says is that honest people keep their word. There's things in the world more important than honesty, Kant be damned.

Comment author: pedanterrific 13 April 2012 04:18:38AM 1 point [-]

...I don't think it does. I think what we're supposed to take from those passages, plus every other time Harry has made a promise, is that he doesn't make promises with the intent to break them.

Comment author: Alsadius 13 April 2012 05:16:19AM 2 points [-]

The latter, yes. The former, no. I think he's basically honest, and as such the statement made in Parselmouth is not a lie, but he's not going to feel himself bound by that promise in extremis.

Comment author: pedanterrific 13 April 2012 05:24:20AM 3 points [-]

(Unless Parseltongue is magically binding.) But yeah, of course I agree that Harry doesn't consider keeping his word to be the be-all end-all. For instance, in the course of TSPE there were several times that Harry considered breaking that specific promise and confessing all, and I don't think the fact that he promised not to was ever even brought up in his internal narration- the decisive factor was always the consequences to Quirrell if he did.

But I still disagree quite strongly with

Harry explicitly says earlier that he'd say he could be trusted with a secret, even if he couldn't be, because it was never helpful to be ignorant of it. I think his statement there is actually a known lie

Comment author: loup-vaillant 12 April 2012 10:20:57PM 1 point [-]

I didn't think of that. Sounds worth considering. But it doesn't change the fact that pretending to be a healer doesn't prevent being a healer. Quirrell knows that Harry knows it, so to me, "pretending to be healer" doesn't provide meaningful evidence in any direction.

Plus, Quirrell is exploring a hypothetical, here. And the healer could be genuine, and somehow tricked, seduced, or bribed. Now that I think of it, this is even more probable than the false healer hypothesis: a real healer genuinely convinced of doing good is probably both easier to find and more reliable than an actual minion.

Comment author: pedanterrific 12 April 2012 10:34:39PM *  4 points [-]

I guess for me the thing that tips the scales between 'real healer' and 'minion pretending to be a healer' is that I don't think it's actually in Quirrell's interests to deprogram Bellatrix of her loyalty to Voldemort.

Though presumably she is at least competent in regular healing, of the sort needed to get Bella back in fighting trim.

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