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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 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

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