= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
JoshuaZ comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
Comments (592)
For an otherwise rational fanfic this seems oddly like a rule out of Dungeons and Dragons.
Edit:Also, it seems like at this point Hermione has gone through some pretty awful stuff also so by this logic her competence level should have gone up a lot.
"Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger" is D+D-esque now? Experience makes people better, as a rule, as long as you can avoid being broken by it.
Also, Hermione's competence level has gone up a lot. You don't think she's a lot stronger than she was at the beginning of the story?
She didn't get a chance to fight during that - it doesn't work quite the same way.
Yeah, that makes this if anything sound even more like D&D. Where is the motivation for this rule coming from? Is there any evidence humans actually act this way at all? The only related evidence I'm aware of goes in the other direction: Traumatized children are more likely to have behaviorial problems and lower IQ after the fact. Citation. (Thought that just popped into my head, could reduced levels of corporal punishment and generally more stable lives be a contributing factor to the Flynn effect?).
It did work out that way in my own life.
There's a Dilbert cartoon in which Dilbert thinks he's really just been faking it since sixth grade.
At age 17 I went through a bit of hell bad enough that I don't particularly want to talk about it, and three weeks later woke up one morning and realized that I would never feel like that Dilbert cartoon again. Literally, just woke up in the morning. It wasn't the result of any epiphany, it seemed more like something biological my brain just did in response. My main reaction was, "Why couldn't my brain have done this three weeks earlier when it would've #$&%ing helped?"
Not sure how that squares with the research, and I couldn't point to anywhere in my life where it happened except that one point.
However, the actual literary logic is something more like, "Once you show Harry thinking his way out of Azkaban, it is no longer possible for him to lose an even battle to Draco - the reader won't believe it." I don't think the 'power up through trial' thing is actually unrealistic, I mean, if I come out of this planet alive I'm probably not going to be fazed by much after that. But it's the more fundamental literary reason why so many stories work that way. You will perceive that this also points in the direction of, "Being run over by a truck isn't the same as punching the truck to a standstill" in terms of whether you powered up after that.
Even so, imagine Methods!Granger fleeing to the bathroom after just hearing Ron call her a nightmare. That could've happened in Ch. 9, maybe, but now Granger has fought three older bullies successfully and you'd be, like, "Yeah right." But she hasn't been to Azkaban, either.
My opinion of you has ebbed and flowed a lot, Eliezer, but one thing for which I doubt I will ever stop loving you is the way you can talk like a science fiction character with the most perfect nonchalance.
Wait wait wait. Just hearing Ron call her a nightmare? That's not at all why Hermione is crying! Hermione is crying because:
Hermione realizes that her best isn't good enough. It doesn't matter that she's good at magic; she's a muggleborn. It doesn't matter that she's helpful; other people don't like her despite her good intentions. It doesn't matter that she's hurting; other people don't care. And so a homesick little girl hides her frustration and pain in the bathroom.
In Methods, the same comment will have a different effect because the reality on the ground is different.
Beyond that, how one responds to social and combat situations is often different; one can easily develop strength in one without strength in the other.
The "that made me stronger" feeling might not be all that correlated to actually becoming stronger.