Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90

palladias

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 90. The previous thread has passed 750 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.)

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, 16, 17,18,19.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

I was thinking about Harry's situation-- he's grieving and under very high stakes time pressure, so there are external sources of stress as well as what he's imposing on himself.

As for the real world, I've been trying to undo a very bad habit of self-attack for a while. Realizing that that the attacks are unfair is a start, but only helps occasionally. Getting angry at it is a risky strategy. If it's the wrong kind of anger, it just feeds into the internal rage. I didn't analyse it before, but the difference might be between a fairly emotionally distant "This makes no sense and should stop because it doesn't make sense" (sometimes helpful) vs. "this attacking part of myself is revolting and infuriating and shouldn't exist" (really, the same attitude that causing the problem).

Examples of the "makes no sense" which do some good: For a while, I'd look in the mirror and on some days I'd think I looked fairly good and on other days I'd think I looked like hell. Eventually I realized that looking like hell actually meant looking frightened and/or tired. At that point, it occurred to me that telling someone who was frightened or tired that they looked like hell was wildly inappropriate, and I've at least cut back on that-- sometimes I have negative opinions about how I look, but the intensity is lower.

I also hang onto the idea that beating up on myself for symptoms of depression doesn't make sense.

Hypothesis: People put amazing amounts of work into emotionally abusing each other. I believe that what reinforces the abuse is seeing that the person abused is seen to feel frightened, squelched, unhappy, etc. The abuse may well continue and intensify until hurt is achieved.

I believe that abuse is a tool for status enforcement.

A person who's abused may internalize the situation and come to believe that feeling better isn't safe, because feeling happy, relaxed, confidant, etc. is precisely what draws more abuse.

The solution isn't just believing that internal abuse is wrong, it's alieving that living well is safe.

I was thinking about Harry's situation-- he's grieving and under very high stakes time pressure, so there are external sources of stress as well as what he's imposing on himself.

I ended up deleting my comments about Harry in this regard. What happens when "heroic responsibility meets failure", when someone accustomed to doing the impossible finally fails when it counts, and holds himself "heroically responsible"? The whipping begins, and right on cue, we get chapters 91 and 92. In a real person, I think the beating will be savage an... (read more)

14jimmy13y

I went through a situation very similar to Ch90. Same story, different details. Even got the worse-than-useless attempts at comfort - now I can't even say "I'm sorry" to my uncle for letting his son die. That's one of the few things that still brings me to tears about this whole incident. My thought process was fairly similar to Harry's, and I've given it a lot of thought, so I might be able to shed some light on the topic. [...] When the pressure was on, there was no room for guilt and it was just do do do with some frantic thinking interpersed - even when it was clear that there was little hope. The feeling that I was to blame didn't come until afterwards, when there was nothing left I could do. At the point where you can still do something, it's not so much the "it's your fault and you should feel bad", but rather "this can't happen. THINK THINK THINK!" which gets in the way. The main advice I have here is to come to terms with the possibility ahead of time. Get those tears out of the way now, so that should it happen, you just see it for what it is and not what it "can't" be. Practice helps, but it's hard to deliberately come by legit/safe practice. Even though I had plenty of experience, I didn't realize at the time that I was a more panicked than I needed to be. I had never lost before, and so I thought I was doing "good enough" - though in hindsight, clues were there. I can't imagine anything I could have done at the time to not feel guilt once it was official, and I'm not sure I would have wanted to anyway. [...] Because you usually can't get away with lashing at others. Lashing at others is often done to shift blame off the attacker even if it doesn't help the attacked take responsibility, and so it makes sense to be punished. It's also easy to win social points for making people feel good and signalling alliance even if it masks over the problem and keeps them stuck. These things don't really apply internally, and there is a purpose to it. [...

0Velorien13y

It seems like you're contradicting yourself there. Would you mind clarifying?