Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85

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The next discussion thread is here.

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

The next discussion thread is here.

As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

If you dredged through canon, you would probably only come up with 20-30 deaths unequivocally and specifically at Voldemort's hand as opposed to random Death Eaters, mysterious deaths, deaths inferred but not actually known to have been Voldemort's doing, general carnage implied but not stated etc. Maybe he's not such a bad guy after all!

But you've moved the goalposts. I didn't ask for deaths that were unequivocally and specifically at Skeeter's hand - there definitely aren't ANY of those, so if that was our condition of guilt she'd be good and Voldemort would be bad. All I asked for were ones that could be traced back to one of her articles - perhaps there are one or two of those, but if we're allowing that as our condition of guilt then Voldemort shares responsibility for just about every death we hear about in canon so he has hundreds if not thousands of deaths on his hands.

Either way, my point was that in order to argue that Skeeter's death was justified on utilitarian grounds, one has to prove that killing her would save lives. Killing her definitely costs one life. Stopping her from publishing costs no lives. I'm not trying to argue that Skeeter is a good person, I'm just pointing out that in the grand scheme of things she's not that bad, and that there are plenty of ways to eliminate her as a threat without getting blood on one's hands.

Your example about the tobacco executives is misleading. We DO require evidence that tobacco kills in order to condemn tobacco executives as being morally bankrupt. Luckily, we have that evidence. I'm asking for evidence that Skeeter articles kill, because one of the main arguments of the Kill Skeeter camp seems to be that they do kill. If you can bring me that evidence I'll continue to agree that Skeeter needs to be stopped but I still won't agree that she should have been killed, any more than I want to kill tobacco executives.

I'm going to repeat that for the sake of clarity. My argument is not:

"Skeeter never hurt anyone so she should be spared."

My argument is:

"Well, I don't agree that Skeeter definitely did kill anyone - I want to hear more evidence. Even if she did, though, we don't need to kill her to save lives, so we shouldn't do that. Therefore, Quirrel did a bad thing."