The research on same-sex attraction is kind of weird. 10% is a good ballpark guess for how many men are habitually into men (with about an even split between gay and bi), but Kinsey (old data, time for a replication) gives more of a 20% total (with an even split too), using an unclear mix of attraction and behavior. But he also says that 46% (?!) of men have ever been attracted to a man. Maybe Harry is guesstimating that the probability he's into men in general but not Snape and the probability he's not much into men but Snape is an exception more or less cancel out?
Kinsey used interviews, and there are some issues with sampling bias with his work - Almost all research on this since has used surveys. Which give wildly differing percentages depending on how the question is asked. asking about behavior in very carefully neutral tones:
"How long has it been since you have had sex with a man ?: Day, week, month, year, never" "How long has it been since you have had sex with a woman? Day, week, month, year, never"
Usually gives results in the 10% range, Asking outright if people are gay or lesbian, 2 to ...
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 87. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.
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.)
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